


Waves

by Noth_lit_8



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Archive warnings apply to flashbacks, But mostly Eleven-Centric, Disturbing Themes, Eleven & Jim "Chief" Hopper Parent-Child Relationship, Eleven/Mike Wheeler-Centric, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Flashbacks, Hallucinations, Healing, Love, M/M, NO sexual content between minors, Nightmares, Not for a while though okay, Oh god what not to tag, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The "underage" is reference to El's traumas, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-03-07 06:51:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13429194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noth_lit_8/pseuds/Noth_lit_8
Summary: El had been eighteen when they put a name to the gap in her heart.PTSD, they called it. El knew it was short for post-traumatic stress disorder: just another long jumble of syllables she  had to become familiar with. Hopper explained it was a way of being sick. Most sicknesses hurt your body, make your throat scratch and your bones ache. But this sick comes from your brain, and it makes you hurt in ways words don't do a good job describing, not that El was good with them anyway.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Before you get invested, this fic's upcoming chapters will not be for the faint of heart.

_ “Jane, I’m so glad to finally meet you. Before we start, I’d like to help you determine what your goal for today’s session is. What would you like to get out of our meeting?” _

_ El let her gaze drift from the cream walls to the small cluster of succulents sitting on the woman’s desk. The leather couch she sat cross-legged on was comfortable enough, and its earthy tones complimented the numerous canvas paintings of outdoor scenes that took up the walls.  _

_ The woman’s question was a fair one. What did she want from today? She thought long and hard, memorizing the veiny pattern of the leather beneath her. But she couldn’t find an answer. _

_ She barely knew how she got to this point. _

_ How the years built up to sitting in a stranger’s office with walls that threatened to close in on her. _

  
  


El had been seventeen when she learned her body had not been used properly.

“Eat me!” Max shouted to Lucas, playful banter piercing through the hum of commotion in the arcade, October winds having driven them indoors for entertainment. 

A few snorts and laughs made their way through the party at Max’s comment. Will wrinkled his nose. “That’s disgusting, Max,” he absentmindedly mumbled, mostly transfixed on the Pac Man battle between his two friends.

Having been out in the real world for the better part of three years and currently attending public school, thanks to over a year of Steve’s diligent tutoring, El typically did not anymore encounter phrases she was unfamiliar with in casual conversation.  _ Eat me _ ? Why would Max taunt Dustin by pretending to be his food?

But it seemed to be funny.   
So El decided to use it one day.

During a high-stakes time in Dungeons and Dragons, El’s mage character proved to be the hero of the night. “Eat me!” she yelled out to the fictional character they had defeated.

Mike choked on the chips in his mouth, and the outburst was followed by deafening silence.

El glanced to all of her friends, trying to figure out exactly what she had done wrong. 

“I...sorry,” El mumbled, cheeks burning and feeling like an idiot for saying something she hadn’t understood.

Dustin coughed and was the first to speak, ever the nurturer. “No, El, you don’t need to apologize. Just…” he looked to Mike, whose face had a flush that matched El’s. “Do you know what that means?”

El shook her head shamefully. “No,” she admitted, and searched for Mike’s eyes, her source of comfort, and found his clammy hand under the table.

Another silence followed, broken only by Lucas. “Mike!” Lucas finally exclaimed in exasperation. “Talk to your girlfriend,” he ordered, and Mike nodded, finally looking to meet El’s eyes with sincerity, trying to communicate as much love and care as he possibly could without words.

“Let’s go somewhere else for a bit, El,” he whispered, and the couple made their way up the stairs, away from the others.

Mike explained. El listened. They talked. They laughed. And when they nestled beside each other under Mike’s comforter, and El spoke of how she thought the mess between her legs was used for something else - was used for her Papa to control her, to hurt her, to claim her - they cried together.

And when Mike vowed to never hurt her, El believed him. And they fell asleep with air heavy with sincerity and something too old for their young hearts to already know mingling in the breath they shared.

  
  


El had been eighteen when they put a name to the gap in her heart.

_ PTSD _ , they called it. El knew it was short for post-traumatic stress disorder: just another long jumble of syllables El couldn't understand. Hopper explained it was a way of being sick. Most sicknesses hurt your body, make your throat scratch and your bones ache. But this sick comes from your brain, and it makes you hurt in ways words don't do a good job describing, not that El was good with them anyway.

The revelation was a long time coming. Hopper acknowledged without difficulty that his growing teenage daughter still participated in childish rituals at night. Kept the light on. Checked underneath her bed. He passed it off as just a side-effect of her childhood being delayed.

But as El got older, the nights got stranger. There were mornings when Hopper would find El asleep on the kitchen counter, in the middle of the room. "Can see everywhere," she explained through shivers in the summer heat, and Hopper would carry her to bed as the sun rose. 

But the tipping point came when Hopper awoke one lazy Sunday morning to hear the downpour of their shower water hitting tiles. Assuming El had simply risen early this morning, he choked down some dry toast and washed it off with black coffee. But Hopper, the man fiercely protective of his child, made sure to notify El he was headed out for groceries as he slipped on a pair of jeans. When his call out to her was met with only the sound of collision between water and marble forever sealed with a coat of grime, he knocked and tried again. Silence.

The door was locked, and Hopper nearly bust his shoulder ramming the hinges off. But all was quickly forgotten at the sight of his pride and joy laying wrinkled and soaked to the core at the base of the tub. When El awoke, he realized how raw her skin was rubbed, and how her bubblegum-pink loofah was literally falling apart within her clutch. The water was ice-cold despite the knob turned to the hottest setting.

"Dirty," El sobbed. "Always dirty."

Hopper wrapped her up in a towel and held her as tremors wracked through her lithe frame with every sob. She couldn’t see the tears that rolled down Hopper’s own cheeks.

 

And now El was nineteen, pressed against Mike in a parking lot they had never been to.

“If you get scared or don’t like the woman, you walk right out of that room. I’ll be sitting right outside, and we’ll go get ice cream and find someone better,” Mike whispered as he peppered her cheeks and nose with kisses. “Nancy thinks she’s the best of the best. She said she aspires to be as good at her job as she is someday, but we can find you someone else if-”

“Mike,” El mumbled, and pulled him as close as she could.

“I’m sorry,” Mike replied, tangling fingers in her mess of curls. “I just want-”

He choked up, but El knew what he meant. He wanted the best for her. He wanted happiness. He wanted safety. He wanted her to heal. 

El wanted to heal, too.

They walked into the building hand-in-hand, hope blooming in El’s chest alongside a creeping feeling of dread.

 

_ El wanted a lot of things that this room and this woman could possibly give her. She wanted to sleep through an entire night. She wanted to be able to strip her clothes away and not feel the itch to crawl out of her own skin as well. She wanted to stop scaring the people she loved. She wanted to forget. She wanted to remember. She wanted to be fearless. She wanted to feel safe. She wanted so many things, but she wasn’t sure if she was ready to tell this stranger about them yet. _

_ So instead, she replied, “El. I go by El.” _


	2. Periwinkle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thought I should mention that each chapter title will be a line from the song "Waves" by Dean Lewis, in order. I'm going to try to make each chapter seem fitting with the lyric. Don't judge me. Or do. w/e

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m gonna start you guys off easy. Some day 1 (lighthearted) therapy and some post-session feels. Just dippin’ your toes in. Next chapter will really decide if you can stomach this fic, I think.  
> Enjoy  
> xox

“El,” the woman responded, testing out the name. “That’s super pretty. My name’s Amelia, in case you don’t know, but you can just call me Amy.” El nodded - she did know that already. In fact, she knew a lot about this woman. She was basically Nancy’s idol. She and Mike had driven over an hour outside of Hawkins just because of how much faith Mike held in this woman.

Amelia - or Amy - leaned forward in her own cushioned chair, and El rocked gently in her pretzel-style pose on the couch. She noticed that Amy had a nice smile. Her teeth were crooked in the front and slightly yellowed, unlike the characters in the medical dramas Hopper used to watch. Freckled cheeks and short purple hair framed her youthful features, and El wondered how she could be so well known in her field despite appearing so young. 

There was something authentic about this woman that El eased over, not that she trusted her just yet. “First meetings can be super awkward; I totally get it,” Amy said, putting down the notebook she was holding. “We can just talk today, if you want. We’ll get to the hard stuff when you trust me,” she added with a wink, coaxing a shy smile from El. “Like, why do people call you El?”   
El swallowed, the smile dropping. That question was not as easy as this lady thought it was. 

But she remembered one thing Mike kept pleading from her. She didn’t have to say anything she wasn’t comfortable with. She didn’t have to like the therapist, and she didn’t have to come back if it went poorly.

_ “But please, baby, promise me that you’ll tell her the truth,” _ Mike had asked over and over through the previous days, and El couldn’t deny him that.

“My fiance gave it to me,” El responded honestly. “When we were thirteen,” she added with a whisper. Six years ago.

Amy had clearly read the distress El tried to hide, so she just nodded and remarked, “That’s really sweet. He’s the cutie you walked in with?”

El couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah.”

Amy looked towards the closed door, as though she could see Mike on the other side, twiddling his thumbs, complexion flushed with nerves. “When’s the wedding?” she asked.

El shrugged, still smiling, this time looking timidly down to the floor. “We don’t know yet. He wants me to be better first. No added stress.” Amelia nodded. “We’re happy with our lives. He goes to Indiana State and interns with NASA there,” she said, feeling the rush of pride that always came over her when she talked of her smarty-pants-fiance’s accomplishments. “I’m a librarian,” she added. “And I run homework help for kids, sometimes.” El cut herself off, surprised how much she had already said to Amy, who grew a grin.

“That’s crazy! My husband works there!” Amy exclaimed, but sobered quickly when she saw El’s terrified expression. “Oh, please don’t worry. 100% patient confidentiality - he’ll never know we’ve ever even met,” she assured, and El settled slightly. She knew all about patient confidentiality. That was what allowed her to theoretically talk about her life before she was found out in the rain. Dr. Gillespie specialized in trauma victims (or trauma  _ survivors _ as Mike liked to call them), and El was sure she’d heard of cases just as weird as hers. 

Okay, maybe not quite as weird. 

Over the hour, as the two women chatted, El decided she liked this Amelia-or-Amy. She was sharp but sweet, and although El was painfully aware of her surroundings at all times, she felt like she could have been just talking to a nice girl at the grocery store instead of to a therapist confined by cream walls.

“I’m gonna give you just a little bit of homework before I see you in three days,” Amy said, and El must have rolled her eyes slightly because Amy laughed. “Yeah, I know, super grade-school. But it’s really important you’re not just working on getting better in my office, but everywhere else too.”

That made sense to El. “Okay,” she agreed, somewhat less than enthusiastically.

Amy smiled empathetically. “By the time we meet up again, I want you to have a complete list of everything you want to accomplish in your time in therapy. Your goals, what you want from yourself, what you want from me, anything and everything else you want. And then when you come back, we’ll make a plan to tackle them.”

El nodded. The task seemed simple enough. 

Amy walked her out of the room and into the waiting room and the two women exchanged goodbyes before Amy ducked back into her office. 

Mike looked up immediately, smiling yet frantically scanning El’s face for an indication of how the session went. Heart fluttering, he stood and took her hand, anxious to hear everything about the last hour.

Another young woman sat behind a counter and cheerily grabbed the couple’s attention. “I forgot to ask if you wanted a receipt for your copay,” she said, mostly to Mike.

“Sure,” El said at the same time Mike sputtered out, “No!”

El furrowed her brows and glanced at her partner, who was reddening slightly. “I mean, no thank you. We’re good. Have a nice evening!” Mike called out, pulling El with him.

El knew something was slightly off, but her mind was already overflowing from the experience of the past hour. “So, did you like her?” Mike tentatively asked as they made their way outside to the brisk February air and towards the car.

“Yes,” El answered. “She was nice. And I think she’s smart.” Mike grinned.

“Oh, that’s so great!” he exclaimed, shoulders dropping slightly with the relieved tension he hadn’t known was there. “You wanna go back in three days?” 

El nodded. “Nancy picked a good person.” Mike opened the door for her, and she slid herself into the passenger’s side of their car. “Even if she gives me homework.”

 

Although El hadn’t felt like she had done much other than sit and talk to a nice woman for an hour, Mike seemed super proud of her. He ordered in pizza to their apartment for the two of them, and they ate while snuggling on the couch to the drone of ‘Honey I Shrunk the Kids’, which always made El laugh. 

When she tilted her head up from Mike’s chest to peck a kiss to his neck, Mike made a mock-offended noise and taunted, “I don’t know if I want someone who puts pineapple on their pizza, kissing me.”

El just made a sound halfway between a giggle and a scoff and kissed him again in response. She could feel the hum of Mike’s laughter on his skin as she kissed to his jaw, and he mumbled out, “Pineapple-breath.” 

_ Oh, it was so on.  _ In retaliation, El poked the divet between the bottom of his ribs and his hip-bone, and started to wiggle her fingers.

“El, no, that’s not fair!” Mike cried out over the ticklish spot and pretended to use all his might to push his fiance off of him. But El was not about to relent, and they both knew that if El really wanted him pinned down, she could just make him stay there. Mike ended up on his back straddled by El, helplessly squirming as the love of his life attacked his ribs. 

In a desperate attempt, he tried kissing El to try and distract her, but it turned out that the girl was great at multitasking.  _ “Fine, no more Mr. Nice Guy,” _ Mike decided with finality and wove a hand behind El’s back, where he tickled right at the base of her spine.

Both of them knew it was El’s most ticklish spot. And because it was, El flinched at the touch, at the nerves firing off and at the abrupt frigid temperature of the hand on her back. And to escape the stimulation, she jerked forwards, accidentally grinding into Mike.

Both of the two sucked in a sharp breath at the unintentional friction, and El found herself looking at Mike with slightly blown pupils. The look was returned, and El slowly repeated the motion, Mike’s hands leaping from her spine and flailing awkwardly in the air for a moment.

“El,” Mike whimpered, his disposition clearly becoming more desperate by the moment. “This isn’t...you know that…” But El twisted her hips again, prying a moan from between Mike’s closed teeth.

She thought this time might finally be different. That maybe she could learn to feel what his bare skin felt like against her flushed chest, but Mike shook his head, looking strangled and torn. “El, stop,” Mike huffed, and El finally relented, sitting back on her heels and letting Mike pry himself out from under her.

“Mike-”

“No.”

She watched her fiance trudge into the bathroom and close the door somewhere between carefully and slamming. The downpour of the shower could soon be heard, bleeding into white noise in conjunction with the radiator.

Heart feeling hollow, El stored the rest of the pizza in the fridge and went to read in bed. When Mike returned wrinkled and pink, they fell asleep intertwined with each other, falling asleep without having said a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, yeah, they’re nineteen and engaged but I kinda am too so


	3. Maroon and true red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's find out the aftermath of what happened last night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friendly reminder: I know some of you were pissed at Mike last chapter, but please remember that these characters are very human! As canon, Mike is far from a perfect person. But he is devoted to El and loves her with all his heart. This fic will probably make you upset at the characters at times, and that's totally fine and normal, but have faith in these guys and gals. They won't disappoint you in the end.  
> xox
> 
> By the way: I decided I don't want to do the Dean Lewis lyrics with each chapter name, and so I don't have chapter names so far because I don't know what direction I want to go with them ahah sorry

_ “Focus, Eleven. You know you can do this.” _

_ Her Papa’s voice seemed large enough to fill the room as El’s eyes stared transfixed on the stranger in front of her. He was seated in a wooden chair - “the chair” as El came to know it - limbs tied to its legs and head bound and tilted back. _

_ “Just like with the dolls, Eleven.” _

_ El rested in her seat, feet swinging absentmindedly, as they were far from being long enough to touch the floor. Like many times before, on the table before her lay one single knife. One, single knife. And like so many times before, there was something she was supposed to connect the knife with. _

_ But the target had never whimpered before, like the man before her was. _

_ “It’s nothing different. This is made for him.” _

_ Just like the dolls were made for practice. This man was bad, and he was made to deal with the repercussions. _

_ She didn’t know what would happen once the knife hit the man, but she knew the dolls always ripped open. And when she found blood oozing from each of her ears and watched the knife sink into pale, exposed flesh, El realized that men ripped open too. _

_ She didn’t know what death was. She didn’t know what it meant to kill. She knew orders. She knew this man was bleeding, and that he was sputtering, and that blood flowed from his mouth, but mostly she just knew the fulfilling sensation of her Papa’s approving pat on her shoulder. _

_ The man convulsed in the chair before gurgling a final time and stilling. _

_ “Beautiful,” Papa whispered. “Beautiful.” _

_ El craned her neck to look up at her Papa, at the white hairs beginning to salt his once blonde locks. “You’ve been a good girl today. Do you know what that means?” _

_ El did know what that meant. _

_ She knew when she did good, she got to sleep with her Papa. And after everything was done, she got to curl up under blankets. _

_ Weakened from the telekinesis, she let herself be carried down corridors and up an elevator until she was dropped to the floor in front of a door marked “Brenner”. _

_ “Let me see you do it, Eleven.” _

_ She was so weak. She just wanted to reach up and turn the knob herself. Just use her own hands for once, but she knew that wasn’t what her Papa wanted. So she focused and flung the door open, collapsing onto the floor when she was done. _

_ She felt her shoulders gripped by Papa as she was led into the room and unceremoniously dropped on top of a desk.  _

_ Her hospital gown was torn away leaving her completely exposed to the freezing air. She watched half-consciously as her Papa tore off his belt. “Papa, I-” _

_ “Eleven,” he interrupted, and she immediately stilled. That was all it took. That was always all it ever took. _

_ She tried to focus on the rigidness of the wood underneath her as her Papa crowded her space and pinned her down by the hip-bones.  _

_ And it hurt, when he forced his way in, like it always did. Every time, she felt something too large for her little body to handle ripping up her insides. She could see her stomach bulge with every move he made. And when he yanked himself out of her, covered in her blood, and held her jaw open as he- _

“El. El, baby, wake up. I can’t let you sleep here.” 

The soft crooning of a voice that seemed like it  _ should have been familiar _ carried its way to her. El’s eyes twitched open until she was able to make sense of her surroundings. Soft fabric tickled her cheek and made her shiver. 

“You’re in the closet, El. You’re dissociating. It’s okay; I’m gonna take you back to bed.”

_ Bed.  _ Beds are nice. Beds are warm and soft and have-

Mike.

El finally raised her gaze to meet shining eyes surrounded by a mop of curls so dark they blended with the night. “Mike,” El whispered, tears beginning to brim. 

“Shh, it’s okay. Come on, baby,” Mike soothed, offering his hand. It was as though everything that happened yesterday evening was completely forgotten. All Mike wanted to do was take care of her, despite the prickling of his own tears forming.

El tentatively took the hand and felt herself positively melt into its warmth - Mike was normally freezing, but their bed must have finally made him a comfortable temperature.

Mike held her firmly but carefully, as though he was holding the most important hand in the world, and led their way from the closet to the mattress. “Do you want me to stay here, or do you want me to take the couch tonight?”

El wasn’t sure she could handle being wrapped up in someone else right now, but the last thing she wanted was for Mike to spend yet another night on the sofa. Enough was enough, already. 

So when El loosened her grip on Mike and turned to make her way out of the bedroom to sleep on the couch herself, Mike did the one thing they both knew he should never do during a dissociation: pull.

He hardly even pulled. It was more so that El pulled and he just held her in place. But the resistance was enough to make El’s heart jump to her throat so high that Mike was ripped apart from her, flung back just far enough to be thrown onto the bed.

And that was when reality stopped.

Because when El defied the bad men, only bad things could come.

Mike scrambled to get himself off the mattress, feelings more bruised than his shin that had collided with the bedpost. 

_ Be a good girl, Eleven. _

_ You know better than to do that. _

_ Spread your legs or I’ll have someone spread them for you. _

When she fell to her knees and felt her consciousness falter between two different realities, she was too far gone to notice the half-choked sobs and cries that forced their way from her throat. 

Mike didn’t hold her, just kneeled in front of her, whispering a poorly-organized litany of love. And when she could finally feel the carpet under her knees, could feel the arms envelope her fully, El let herself be taken back to bed.

Mike waited for El to stop shuddering and stayed still for a few heavy moments even after she nudged her head into his neck, breathing in the familiar smell of his overpriced shampoo and the overly-human combination of Colgate and morning breath.

Mike pressed a kiss to her curls and hummed against the skin. “Do you want to go back to sleep?”

Considering the nightmare she just had, the last thing El wanted to do was sleep.

She shook her head against Mike’s neck and felt his Adam’s apple bob as he nodded. “That’s fine. It’ll be time to get up soon, anyway.”

It hit El all in one blow, the amount of affection and love she felt for his boy. She felt it constantly, during every waking moment, but all that adoration exploded into something that scattered throughout every crevice of her body.

El couldn’t help but start shaking again. “I’m sorry,” she half-whispered-half-choked. “I’m sorry, Mike.”

Alarmed, Mike wiggled himself downwards and pressed his freckled nose against El’s cute little button one. “Don’t be. El, you have nothing to be sorry for. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

El let her tears mingle with the heat of Mike’s skin as she slotted their lips together, barely needing to lean forward to do so. 

The kisses turned deeper and when El brushed a tongue against Mike’s lower lip, he parted them and let her lick against the roof of his mouth. “Jesus, El,” he mumbled, and she giggled against his dampened lips.

Every part of her body was warmed up again, cupping Mike’s face like she needed him to breathe. So when Mike pulled away to look intensely at her, El tried to lean back in.

“Hang on, baby,” he soothed. “I just wanted to let you know-” he stumbled, and El watched him patiently through hooded eyes and thick lashes. “I mean, I should be the one apologizing. About last night, I mean. I feel terrible."

El shook her head. “Mike, it’s okay.”

But Mike just sighed halfheartedly and earnestly dropped a kiss to her forehead. “It’s not, though,” he whispered. “I just want...I just don’t want to…”

El understood. She more than understood. She felt it too. “I know,” she mumbled as she wrapped her arms around her fiance. “Stopping was right. You were right.”

It was Mike’s turn to shake his head. “That’s not what I mean, exactly. It’s not about being right. It’s about…” he trailed off, not sure exactly how to communicate what he meant. 

But he didn’t need to be articulate. “Me too,” El whispered back, and they let their breath mingle in comfortable silence until their alarm went off. And the real world started up again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you couldn't tell, I have a headcanon that Mike calls El "baby" I'm not even sorry.


	4. Turquoise and Sand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little longer than the others, and it's about the same length I'll be making them from here on out! Additionally, if you'd like a glimpse into El's teenhood, to explain things like why she calls Hopper "dad", and why she knows some things about Will, you can read all about it in my very fluffy (and completed) work called El's Word Book. xox

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my dearly beloved readers. It’s come to my attention through AO3 Policy and Abuse that some individuals have found that I have insufficient warnings tags for this work. As a result, I have added “underage” in addition to the two already used, which are “rape/non con” and “graphic depictions of violence”. I did not have “underage” used previously because I assumed it applied to consensual underage sex, and El’s childhood sexual traumas did not fall into this. I am working with AO3 now to make sure I take all the precautions necessary for this work. I am sincerely so sorry for anyone I upset - I feel terrible and hope you understand it was never my intention to cause anyone pain or distress. This absolutely is a heavy fic, and if its content upsets you, please do not read it. Take care. xox

A small tug on the hem of El’s dress made her automatically kneel and paint a gentle smile on her lips. “Can I help you?” she asked, thankful for Hopper’s lessons in manners each and every day.

The child before her was young, maybe four, and he stared at El with big green doe eyes. El caught sight of the child’s father standing nearby, watching the interaction with the fondness of a mother bird who let their chick try flying for the first time. The little boy shifted his feet and rubbed his thumbs as anxious children do, and blurted out, “Do you have Biscuit books?” as though he had practiced the sentence several times beforehand and couldn’t wait to just say it.

“I do,” El replied softly. “Let me show you where they are.” She raised herself back to her feet. The child tentatively stuck out his hand to be held by hers, after glancing back to his dad to get a nod of affirmation. 

She led the boy to a nearby shelf, the father trailing behind.

Once the child’s arms were filled with as many Biscuit books as they could hold, El waved to the father and watched them make their way to the check-out desk.

“Eleanor? You’ve got a call!” Marissa called from several rows of shelves away. The woman was predictable: she always called El Eleanor, and she had no problem yelling in the library, as long as everyone else was quiet.

El strode over to the desk and took the phone from Marissa with an appreciative nod. “El Hopper,” she greeted.

“Hey, El! How’s work?” a sunny voice on the other end asked, and El smiled, always thankful for Will’s frequent calls. 

“Hey, Will. It is good. Lots of kids are here now because school just got out for the day,” she answered, twirling the cord between a finger. “How’s school?” 

El could practically hear Will smiling on the other end. “Great! Actually, really great. That’s kinda why I’m calling, actually.” She rested an elbow on the counter to listen closely, earning a stern glare from Marissa. “I was wondering if you and Mike ‘d like to go to the diner tonight. I kinda…” El heard a cough on the other end. “Met somebody. A-and want you guys to meet them.”

“Them?” El pressed, coyly. 

She could hear Will scoff. “Him, okay? You already know that,” he clarified with a nervous laugh, and El giggled too. “Just meet us at the diner at half past seven if you can come. And drag Mike with you, too. Party meeting...plus one.”

El wholeheartedly laughed at that. “I will. I can’t wait to meet him,” she emphasized in earnest.

“Thanks, El. See you soon!”

She handed the receiver back to Marissa, who put it away on its stand. “Your girlfriend meet a nice guy?” she asked innocently. 

El nodded. “Something like that,” she answered, leaving the desk to busy herself before the woman could ask anymore questions.

 

When Mike pulled up in their rustbucket a few hours later and got out of the driver’s side door, El sprang from the building and leapt into his arms.

“Hi, Mike,” she cooed, and Mike chuckled.

“Hey, El. Did you have a nice day at work?” he asked, opening the passenger’s side for her. 

“I did,” she said honestly. El loved everything about working at the children’s library. The blue hues and bright colors and pictures made it impossible not to feel cheery. It was fun to go through the shelves and find the places Hopper had picked off books for her when she lived at the cabin. Nowadays, she was moreso asking Mike to pick up literature for her from the campus bookstore. “Were classes good?”

Mike was always hard at work for his physics degree. There were many nights when El fell asleep in his lap in their bed as he took diligent notes through the beam of a flashlight. “They were fine,” Mike answered, and El noticed he chose his words noticeably slowly. “I did find out that I’m gonna be really busy for the rest of the semester,” he broke gently. “NASA needs their interns to pick up more hours, and linear algebra is turning out to be harder than I thought it was going to be,” he explained with a huff. “I actually have to back to campus for a bit tonight,” he finally admitted.

El furrowed her brows. “Will wants us to meet his boyfriend at the diner now,” she said as she pulled on her seatbelt. “I think he really likes him.” 

Mike frowned. “Shit. I wish I could go. But I really don’t think I can get out of this, tonight.” El crossed her legs in her seat. “But I’ll be free tomorrow night, I swear. To stay in the waiting room with you while you have your second session,” he promised. “Tell the guys I miss them?” he asked, and El nodded softly.

“Of course,” she whispered, placing a hand over Mike’s on the stick shift. 

When they drove up to the diner, Mike leaned across the console to give El a kiss, which she gratefully returned before grabbing her purse and popping open her door. “Love you!” Mike called.

“I love you too!” El yelled back as she pulled her coat tightly around her and was greeted by the jingle of bells above the diner door. 

She barely had time to step into the restaurant before heavy, strong arms were squeezing her. “Our mage has returned!” the man’s voice bellowed dramatically, making El laugh. 

“Hi, Dustin,” she deadpanned sarcastically as she hugged him back until he finally let go. El watched as her friend slid himself into a side of a booth with Max and Lucas, who greeted their friend, and El found an empty spot next to Will. On the other side of him was another boy with rich skin, shining hair, and a sharp jawline to compliment deep eyes. He waved timidly at her.

“Hey, I’m Sam,” he introduced himself while reaching out a hand, which El took. “Full name’s Samar, but people call me Sam.”

El smiled warmly, thinking the nerves appearing at his cracks from meeting his boyfriend’s friends were rather cute. “It’s nice to meet you,” she returned. “My name’s El. And people call me El.” The joke coaxed a laugh from everyone at the table, and El thought she could see Sam’s shoulders relax slightly.

Lucas propped and elbow on the table. “El, where’s your man at?” he asked, and Max let out a long-drawn out “aww.”

“Awh, Lucas misses his best friend!” Max taunted, and Lucas nudged her and mumbled something unintelligible with a half-formed smile.

El ignored her friends’ bickering and took a sip of the water her friends must have gotten for her before she arrived. “Internship. They need him more now,” El replied simply.

Dustin frowned. “Well, that’s what he gets for being smart!” His face lifted quickly again, turning to Will and Sam. “But I’m more interested in how you two met!”

Over assorted flavors of milkshakes and waffles drowning in whipped cream, El found out Sam and Will had met at an art show. “I was showing off some of my shit when this cutie just walked up to me,” Sam said, and the beginnings of a butterfly blush was evident on Will’s face. “He said he likes to come to this kind of stuff because he draws for fun, and he thought my work was pretty. I thought he was pretty.”

Max slurped the remnants of her shake before shaking her head. “Jesus Christ, that’s the cutest shit I’ve ever heard.” El agreed. Unlike Sam, Will wasn’t studying art, but instead was looking to be a physical therapist. But the tattoos he was starting to accumulate showed off a number of his “doodles” he loved. 

When their stomachs were full and tired from shaking of laugher, the “party plus one” gathered up their things and began to exchange hugs. “You need a ride back, El?” Dustin asked, and El frowned.

“I don’t know. Mike didn’t say when he is done tonight,” she admitted.

Dustin nodded made a “come on” motion with his arm. “How about I drive you home, and when you get there, you can call Mike and let him know you got a ride back?” 

“But your bio lab is at eight AM-”

“Don’t worry about it!” Dustin insisted. “Always have time for our favorite superhero,” and El relented, grinning at the pet name that was vague enough not to lead on strangers while still holding meaning for their friends.

So when El made her way to the apartment, the first thing she did after dropping her purse was make her way to the phone and dial the number for Mike’s office. She studied the earthy tones and half-worn furniture scattered around their living room/kitchen, and then heard the voice of the secretary asking her to leave a message.

El called twice more before acknowledging that no one was going to answer. The secretary must have certainly gone home by this time, and anyone left in the office (Mike included) must be far too busy to answer the phone.

She knew that if she really needed to reach her fiance, she could pull herself into darkness and find him, wherever he was. She had done it many times before. But she was tired and had a long day ahead of her tomorrow, so she decided to work on the homework Amy assigned her instead.

El settled down on the sofa with a pad of paper and a pencil, knowing this kind of task would inevitably find her needing to use an eraser.

What did she want from therapy? 

A lot of things. El wanted a lot of things, and she wasn’t sure she could have them all, but she wrote them down anyway. Amy would tell her if any of them were unrealistic, right?

 

When Mike unlocked the apartment door several hours later, he found El glowing in the dim light of their second-hand lamp, arm extended off the couch and paper resting on her chest. He smiled at the domesticity of the scene before him, and went to take a look at what El had been working on. The paper was wrinkled and smudged all over from erasing and rewriting, and Mike wondered what could have caused El to put a paper in that sort of state.

  1. I want to sleep all night.
  2. I want to remember where I am when I am at work.
  3. I want to get myself out of flashbacking without help.
  4. I want to stop scaring my dad, Mike, and my friends.
  5. I want to feel safe.
  6. I want to have sex with Mike.



Mike read and reread every statement until he was sure he’d never forget a single eraser stain on the paper. He wasn’t sure he should even be reading this - he knew therapy was supposed to be private - but how could he help his fiance if he didn’t know what she wanted? 

And it was then that Mike vowed he’d do everything he could to make sure El could do all six of those things. 

He’d stay out all night if he had to.

As peaceful as El looked, he knew from her awkward position that if he left her there, she’d wake up with an awful crick in her neck. He poked her gently on the nose. “Hey, baby,” he whispered. “Time to go to bed.”

El twitched her nose and turned over to get away from the noise. “What time is it?” she mumbled back, and Mike couldn’t help but smile every time he saw El so cute and sleepy.

“It’s 9:30,” he lied. “Want me to take you to bed?” El nodded, and Mike scooped her up bridal style, taking her through the threshold to their bedroom and tucking her under the covers. 

“Bed or couch?” he whispered, always cautious. Without opening her eyes, El breathed out, “Bed.”

So Mike sidled himself in next to El, and wrapped his arms around her as she turned away from him and pressed her back to his front. They fell asleep soon after, the lamp in the main room still on and the paper with El’s wishes lying on the couch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sam is Indian because I don’t think one character of color is enough to constitute diversity. And idk when I pictured Will’s boyf I just pictured like a tall Indian cutie?? Idk  
> Also I live and die for librarian!el  
> Okay last thing: I dunno why but I’m really curious to learn more about my readers. I love your comments so much - they just make me so happy and I really can’t believe people read my shit! So here’s my get-to-know-you question rn: What do you want to do as a career? Or if you already have one, what is it? Personally, I’m studying elementary education with a minor in education policy! I couldn’t be happier with my career choice.  
> Thanks for reading! xox


	5. Baby blue and grey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I talked to AO3 again and it sounds like I now have all the sufficient warning tags. But I wanted to let you guys know that if you think this fic needs any additional tags, please let me know! Also, I wanted to say thanks so much for responding to my last chapter’s end notes question! I absolutely loved learning a little bit about what some of you do or want to do. Thanks so much for sharing that with me. Additionally, FYI this fic is compliant with “El’s Word Book” but not “Cramps”. Anyway, onward! xox

Unlike yesterday, when El heard the rumble of the rustbucket approaching the library, she didn’t rush to leave work. Not because she was particularly invested in something at the library, but because she wasn’t thrilled about where she was about to go.

Mike still got out of the car to open the passenger’s side and return a kiss from El. “Hey, are you ready?” he tried to ask smoothly, but his tone was tinged with nerves. El shrugged. She was as ready as she’d ever be.

The drive out of town to the office was long in and of itself, but El’s fears made each minute seem infinite. What if her expectations from this woman were too high? What if Amy would listen to her and decide she was a lost cause, and that she couldn’t be treated? What if she’d be too tired from the clients she was sure to have already had today, and she wouldn’t have the energy to talk to her this late? And the worst: What if there wasn’t really confidentiality, and someone would hear of her-

“El,” Mike murmured soothingly from behind the wheel. “Baby, you can’t do this to yourself,” he said as he took one of El’s hands, keeping one on the wheel because he knew El would yell at him if he didn’t. 

“Do what to myself?” she asked, knowing it was pointless because they could practically read each other’s minds.

“You know what I mean,” Mike pressed. “Amelia is awesome. She’s gonna help you with everything you need,” he assured and squeezed El’s fingers.

El sat in silence. “Promise?” she whispered. She knew it wasn’t fair of her to make Mike promise her this. She knew it was out of his control. But she needed reassurance, and that’s what Mike gave her. The car turned off the highway onto a worn back road, and their seats jostled above the uneven asphalt.   
Bump. “Promise.”

Bump. “I love you.”

Bump. “I love you too.”

 

El hadn’t noticed how far the sun had set until they were already at the parking lot. Hands interlocked and without speaking a word, El pulled open the door and the couple made their way to the receptionist’s desk.

“Hi there!” the woman greeted, and El wished she would be less cheery. “Checking in?”

Mike looked to El, who was staring at her toes and didn’t seem ready to speak. “Yeah, six fifteen for El Hopper?” The woman’s blonde curls bobbed as she mumbled something to herself as she looked through some files. 

“Hopper...Hopper…Hop- oh! Yes, you were just here a few days ago, weren’t you?” Mike sighed. “You can go take a seat. Oh wait, no, come back real quick. I need you to fill out some more paperwork. Just about family medical history.”

Mike shot a glance at El, who looked up from her feet and stared the woman straight in the eye. “I’m adopted.”

The receptionist seemed surprised, but not fazed. “That’s fine. There’s some stuff that pertains directly to you. All that means is that it shouldn’t take you long to complete!” 

Mike watched as El took the clipboard and nabbed a pen from a mug, pulling on Mike’s hand that was still attached to hers. 

El was worried Mike would need to help her with a lot of words, but she surprised herself by understanding many of them. No, she was not pregnant. No, she did not intend on getting pregnant soon. No, she is not on medication. No, she had never been seen by a psychologist before. A lot of the information seemed repetitive to the stuff she had filled out last session, but honestly, she just wanted to fill it out and be done.

When she brought the forms back up to the desk, Amelia emerged from her office, freckles radiant above her crooked smile and purple hair complimented by her gray sweater dress. “Hey, El! You wanna head on in?” She waved Mike goodbye with a nervous glance, and she felt his heart go out to her. She knew his leg would be bouncing continuously for the next hour.

Amy sat herself back at her desk while El took the couch again, folding her legs under herself. She watched as Amy ran a hand through her hair and shuffled through some papers before turning to her with a soft smile. “I’m glad you came back, El. How are you feeling today?”

Tired. Scared. Nervous. Hopeful. Dreadful. Skeptical. What else?

“I don’t know,” El said instead, and she was sure there was some truth in that.

Amy nodded. “That’s okay,” she stated as though that was obvious. Not obvious in a way that El should have known it, but obvious in a way that made her feel like it was always okay if she didn’t know what was going on inside her heart. “Would you like to tell me about your day instead?” Amy suggested.

This, El could handle. “It was kind of a slow day,” El started tentatively, and pushed herself to launch into a discussion of how some girl stole her boss’, Flo’s, lunch out of the fridge and Flo figured out who it was and sent them to the bathroom crying. Honestly, El liked the woman’s fire and intelligence, even if she wasn’t sure she wanted to be just like her when she was older. “And my dad called and asked if we can eat lunch this weekend. I said yes. I’m excited about that,” she added.

Amy quickly scribbled something down without taking her eyes off of El. “You and your father get along?” she asked, and El nodded.

“Yes. He took me when I was thirteen. We fight sometimes, but he loves me and is proud of me. I love him too.” 

Amy smiled. “That’s really awesome. Do you have any other people who you love?”

This coaxed a smile from El as well. “Mike,” she answered right away, feeling warm at the knowledge he was right on the other side of office’s wall. “And my friends. Dustin, Lucas, Will, and Max,” she added. “We went to dinner yesterday. I met Will’s boyfriend. He’s really nice.” Amy’s eyes crinkled approvingly and she nodded gently.

“One of the most important things through therapy is that you have a good support system. That you have people you trust and love. Sounds like you’ve got those?”

El had never heard of a support system before, but it sounded like she had one.

Amy put clipboard back on her desk and crossed her legs, signaling that she was about to go into something less lighthearted. “Did you do the homework we talked about?” 

El tensed, but nodded, her fingers itching to retrieve the paper from her bag. “Would you like to talk about it?” El nodded again, slower this time, opening her purse to unveil the abused sheet of paper and offering it to Amy, who shook her head.

“Can you read them out loud?” she suggested instead. El took a deep breath. This might be a really bad idea, but desperation for normalcy was getting the better of her.

“I want to sleep all night,” she started, the want so deep within her that she didn’t even need to look at the paper. To fall asleep in bed and wake up in the same place with no interruptions, no visits to the closet or the kitchen counter, and without kicking and screaming as she slept, waking up to Mike barely holding it together.

“I want to remember where I am when I’m at work.” To not escape the staff bathroom after half an hour of curling up underneath the sink and force herself to ignore the inquiring gaze of Marissa. To not be brought back to reality only to realize the amount of time she spent lost within herself while she could have been helping children and their families.

“I want to get myself out of flashbacking without help.” To not be helpless alone with herself. To be independent, in the most appropriate sense of the word.

“I want to stop scaring my dad, Mike, and my friends.” To not feel overwhelmed with the memories of Hop carrying her back to her bed after a sleepless night in the middle of a room. To not worry about the tear tracks on Mike’s cheeks when he blatantly faced away from her at night, scared of hurting her with his own fear. To not recall Will sneaking into the girl’s locker room to drag her away from shoving herself into a locker, back in high school.

“I want to feel safe.” To not be constantly looking over her shoulder. To not feel invisible touches on her thigh and over her spine. To stand being alone.

“I want to have sex with Mike.” To align every element of her body with her mind. To separate trauma from intimacy. From love.

Amy wrote down each affirmation for her own records. El prayed Amy couldn’t feel the pounding of her heart, or see the rapid rising and falling of her chest beneath her blouse, or hear the overwhelming thought that wouldn’t leave her alone.  _ She can’t help you. _

But instead, Amy just put her pencil down and look El dead in the eyes. “You can do all of that,” she said, and El breathed in deeply. “That’s all very reasonable.”

El nodded but stayed silent, so Amy spoke next. “Why do you think you don’t have those things right now?” she asked, and El could feel her silently communicate that this question was vital.

_ “Rape,”  _ Mike had told her at seventeen with a thumb stroking her jawline and a hand clutching hers like she would turn to dust if he didn’t keep a firm hold on her.  _ “The word you’re looking for is ‘rape’, El.” _

“My Papa-” El found herself starting.

_ “Be good for your Papa.” _

_ “Because you did so good today.” _ _  
_ _ “Papa knows best for you.” _

El swallowed. “raped me,” she paused, and added, “a lot.”

Amy didn’t flinch or even move a muscle. “Okay,” she stated simply, and El felt a rush of appreciation for the woman, who, after several silent moments in which El took the time to process what she had said, finally crossed her feet, giving El the idea that every move Amy made was calculated. And El understood that she was not about to ask anything of her, or tell her what to do, or even prompt her. 

She glanced at the clock. There was still forty-five minutes.

Forty-five minutes to say whatever she wanted or not say whatever she didn’t want. And there was so much she wanted to say, to vomit out the words and let them hang in the air for a moment before Amy would catch them and make some sort of good from them.   
“When I got my period,” El started, surprised at how stoic her voice came out. “I thought I was hurt,” she admitted. She remembered how she gasped for air on the shower floor of the bathroom she and Hopper shared, recalling how the blood covering the flesh between her Papa’s legs would continue to flow from her for hours after, and how she’d bleed all over his sheets in the night. And how the stains in his bed would still be there the next time.

“I did not tell anyone I got it because I was scared. I put toilet paper in my underwear. For...maybe a year. My dad didn’t even think that I would get a period because he just did not think about that stuff. He did not know until I bled through my overalls at school when I was sixteen, and the nurse sent me home in sweatpants that were not mine.”

Hopper had gone pale when El explained that she needed new overalls because the nurse threw hers away, covered in blood. He left the cabin for a bit and came back with a box of pads, probably to avoid teaching her how to use tampons (although she learned when Max said the word “tampon” once right before graduation and El asked what that was). Her dad had explained her period was actually a good thing, that it would let her have kids someday, but El still had no idea what sex was. Hopper had avoided that, for whatever reason. She told Amy everything.

“Do you wish your dad had told you what sex was?” Amy asked when she stopped.

She thought back to the long night when she and Mike were seventeen, when she had learned so much about her body all at once that she took notes and made Mike flush a deep baby pink. “Yes,” El decided. It had been a lot to hear all in one night. Mike had grabbed at his hair as he paced around the room, cursing out and insulting the man who wasn’t there to hear him go on about how he wasn’t doing the things parents need to do. El had to bring him down from his seething, and he had covered her forehead with kisses as he murmured apologies into her curls.

El thought that she had never spoken so much in her life as she did sitting on that office couch. She wasn’t even sure that all the outpour from her mouth was a good idea; she still had her doubts about the safety of the memories she shared, but making the list a few nights ago had made her hopeful. And hope was powerful. Or dangerous. Maybe both.

Amy was the one to bring up the time, and El had sheepishly collected her bag and gone to walk out of the room. “You don’t need to rush,” Amy insisted, but El knew, and she had a feeling Amy knew too, that El was embarrassed at the last hour, so Amy let her go. “Next week, we’re gonna get started on that list.”

When she stepped through the threshold, she was greeted by the sight of Mike’s half-closed eyes skimming through one of his textbooks. He didn’t even notice the door opening, but when he heard El’s soft patter of footsteps, he immediately blinked himself back awake. They stared at each other like that, El clutching her bag as Mike’s textbook dangled precariously off his knees, one of which was, sure enough, bobbing up and down.

“Hey,” he whispered.

El gave a half-hearted grin back. “Hey.”

Mike’s adam’s apple bobbed visibly as he swallowed. “Good?”

El nodded. “Good. Let’s go home.”

The secretary was already gone, and when they made their way to the rustbucket, El saw Amy’s office shut itself into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: v long note ahead:  
> Alright guys I have another question and this one is heavier but I’m asking it because I’m fucking at WAR with myself. Basically I’m questioning the moral positioning of writing explicit content of of-aged characters while the canon characters are not of age. Like, if I were to write explicit sexual content for this fic (which I plan(ned?) on doing because I feel like it’s super fitting and I think it would really enhance the meaning of the story and the characters are ADULTS), is it fucking ethical?? Because fics are about taking the characters and trying to write them in a way that does justice to them. But then I think about how these characters are played by like actual actors who are CHILDREN and I come like ~this~ close to vomiting in my mouth. But my characters are so far removed from these real life actors, but a r e t h e y r e a l l y? And then I think about how someone could read this and interpret it as me being a fucking creep and I think about how this could impact my career (ESPECIALLY because I’m in elementary education) and I’m like HAH MAYBE I SHOULD STOP WRITING AH. I don’t even know if I’m making sense anymore, but I want to know what you guys think of this. Because I’m fucking beating myself up thinking about this and I need insight. Please provide some. Thanks. Love you. The end. Goodbye.  
> Edit: idk if this matters (tbh I don’t think it does) but I’m 19 soon to be 20.


	6. Mahogany and Amethyst

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW for flashbacks. Italicized.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to say thank you so much to everyone who responded to my question in last chapter’s notes. I feel a million times better now that I’ve heard the thoughts of so many others, especially those of a few other educators. I’ve decided that in order for this fic to progress the way I want it to, there WILL be sexually explicit scenes (I’m not talking about rape. I’m talking about sex. You already knew this fic would have rape flashbacks). It’s not going to be “smut”. It’s going to be emotional and hopefully moving explicit content that is critical to the plot of this work. I will warn you in the beginning summary or notes if it’s in a chapter. I think it is crucial to how I want this piece to work. Don’t expect it for a while more now, but it will be coming in time. Thank you so much for your input, everyone, and please enjoy the chapter. xox

“I found it!” El called from the bathroom closet. How did it get back here?

She heard a sudden clatter from their bedroom and giggled. “Well how the hell did it wind up in the bathroom?” Mike yelled back, annoyance evident in his tone, making El laugh even harder.

Funnel and pail in hand, El rushed to the door of their apartment while Mike clambered out of their bedroom. Together, they escaped to the hallway, ran past the other apartment doors, and were greeted by the bitter February air and softly swirling snow. They hurried down the five flights of stairs and when their feet finally hit the white blanket covering the grass, El wondered just how many snow cones they could have already made with the snow that fell while they were sleeping.

She nestled the pail down on the grass and placed the funnel over top. “I’m thinking orange juice would be perfect,” Mike mused, and El nodded, pressing herself into her fiance when she felt the chill of the air make its way to her bones. 

El wasn’t the biggest fan of the winter, but one thing she adored were snow cones. Orange-juice-flavored snow cones, to be specific. And so last winter, during their Freshman year, Mike had picked up a funnel so they could collect more snow than they could possibly want, more than just the bucket alone could collect, while also discouraging El from collecting snow that had already lain on the ground.

_ “Bugs could have pooped in there,” Mike freaked. _

_ El snorted. “There’s no poop, Mike,” she sighed, but Mike went out for the funnel anyway. _

In their rush to get outside, the couple hadn’t changed from their pajamas or put on coats, so they made their way back in, where Mike headed to the kitchen and started to mix up a coffee and a hot chocolate.

“One mug or two?” Mike asked, voice just loud enough to carry to where El was changing in the bedroom.

“One!” she called back, knowing she needed to save her appetite for breakfast with Hop, even though her sweet tooth was calling foul.

She yanked on a sweater printed with patterned roses and some high-waisted jeans and went to the bathroom to put on mascara and try to braid a front section of her hair. When she was satisfied enough, she flicked off the lights and slipped out of the room to find Mike stirring a pan of milk. 

El slid her arms around his waist and pressed her face between his shoulder blades, breathing in the familiar scent of Old Spice and fabric softener. “You could have just put my milk in the microwave,” she hummed. 

Mike spun around in her arms and bent down to kiss her. “I know, but stove top makes it taste better.” 

When El’s cocoa was hot enough for her liking and the coffee pot was finished, the couple found themselves snuggled together under a blanket on the couchf, the television fighting a losing battle for their attention.

Mike ran a finger over the braid above El’s forehead and kissed her again, chasing the taste of chocolate on her lips and only pulling her back to look at her. “Are you sure you like the ring?” Mike asked, seemingly out of nowhere, and El rolled her eyes. She had heard this question a million times.

She sighed, “Yes, Mike.” The stone situated on her left ring finger was considerably smaller than the ones she had seen others sporting. It was a fraction of the size of Karen Wheeler’s, which is probably why Mike was so insecure about it. But every day since November, she had insisted she’d never seen anything so beautiful.

Mike took a firm hold of El’s waist and squeezed tightly in the way that made El giggle as Mike taunted, _ “I love you so much I just need to pop you.” _ He kissed her again, this time with more urgency, and El brushed her thumb over one of his cheekbones. 

They sat like that until their mugs were empty and Mike needed to leave for his internship and drop off El. He hummed contently again. “Are you going to want my last name?” he mused.

El pondered that. She loved being El Hopper. She loved that her last name showed that she had a parent, that she had a family composed of just the two of them and that she was cared for. She had maybe five years now to get used to the last name, and yet it still made her smile every time she heard it.

El Hopper. El Wheeler.

“I don’t know,” El said honestly, and Mike nodded, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“You don’t have to know. Either one is fine.” El smiled, pleased with the response, but then wrinkled her nose with surprise when Mike added, “And you could always have both. Hyphenate, you know? El Hopper-Wheeler. Eleven Hopper-Wheeler. Or Jane Hopper-Wheeler. Whatever you want.”

Now that was a possibility she had never thought of before. El Hopper-Wheeler. 

It had a nice ring to it.

 

The tiny town of Hawkins could not have been more thrilled when a Denny’s moved in in the summer of ‘87. El visited on occasion. Ate their waffles and tried not think about how much it sounded like “Benny’s”. 

Hopper didn’t like visiting the noisy town around Indiana State where she and Mike lived, so they always agreed to meet halfway between the area and Hawkins, landing them in the middle of practically nowhere (which Hopper honestly loved).

Despite the weather, the chief was waiting for El outside the restaurant when she and Mike pulled up, and El was sure to give Mike an excited kiss goodbye before wishing him a good day at work. Hopper politely looked away.

She pulled on the hood of her coat and hustled to where Hopper was waiting for her. She pressed herself into his bomber jacket while he rubbed her back. “Hi, Dad,” she mumbled into the rough fabric.

“Hey, kiddo. Ready for waffles?”

What a question.

The father-daughter pair situated themselves into a booth while Hopper ordered a coffee and El nursed her second cocoa of the morning. Hopper updated her on life at the station. Flo was still “up his ass,” as he said. Things were overall quiet. Steve was still well-loved among the other employees, his sharpness appreciated by the officers and his suaveness swooned over by the ladies. El missed him. Hopper promised he’d let Steve know.

“Do you have to go into work today?” Hopper asked after the waitress left with their food orders, waffles (“extra whipped cream, please”) for El and sausage, eggs, and pancakes for himself. 

El shook her head and sipped from her mug. “No, I go tomorrow,” she said, and Hopper beamed in his quiet way. The children’s library had previously been closed on Sundays, but El loved the work so much that she volunteered to work the extra day, thus the new seven days a week schedule. Flo was so appreciative that she often gave El Saturdays off. Usually she’d spend them with Mike, but like he said, the internship needed him more now. Hopper couldn’t tell her enough how proud of he was.

“You went from never having held a book to being surrounded by them for most of the day,” Hopper mused. It was strange, but El had grown to love the printed words and helping children understand them like Steve had helped her, even if they were much younger than she had been. “Anything else you’ve been up to?” Hopper added.

El shrugged, not sure if she wanted to mention in the diner what two prominent events of the last week had been. The waitress popped by again, offering El another mug of cocoa, which she politely declined this time. “No, thank you,” she said, the second portion of the phrase starting to become increasingly more automatic for her.

Hopper took on the weight of keeping the conversation going. “Joyce and I met for coffee,” he muttered under his breath, like someone had forcibly pulled the words out of him. El smirked.

“Coffee, but contemplation?” she added, making Hopper chuckle. “Or other things than contemplation?”

“El!” Hopper scolded, but he couldn’t hide his grin. “We’re just both still suffering from empty-nest. Hit me right when you left, but I guess it took a year for Joyce.” 

El nodded and hummed thoughtfully. It made sense. Will visited home frequently for his mother’s sake and for his own sake, but sophomore year was turning out to be more intensive for the future physical therapist. He would talk to El some evenings in the in-between when she’d visit, about how his nights at the library were growing longer and longer.

“Nothing much going on with us, okay?” Hopper huffed, and El raised her eyebrows but nodded.  _ Yeah, sure. Whatever you say, Dad. _

“More interested if you and Mike have picked out anything for the wedding yet? A date? A dress? Even a place?”

El’s eyes dropped and she want quiet for a moment. “Not yet. Mike wants to wait until therapy makes me better,” she whispered, giving a long minute for Hopper to understand what she was saying. When he did, the corners of his mouth fell.

He breathed out a huff of acknowledgement and picked up his coffee to take another swig, probably to have something to do with his hands. “That’s good, Ellie. That’s very good. The one Nancy likes?” El nodded. “Good.”

They sat in silence until their food was delivered and El smiled at the mug full of whipped cream delivered with her meal. She gave the waitress an appreciative grin before spooning it out onto the waffles. 

Although she was ravishing her meal, Hopper had yet to do much than poke at his, looking like his mind was far away from the diner. It was unnerving, so El tried to break the silence, something she wasn’t very good at, but knew she needed to work on.

“Amy asked me if I like my dad. I said I do,” she said with whipped cream between her teeth. Hopper worried at his lip. “Because I love you,” she explained.

She watched her dad just poke at his eggs, and her stomach started knotting. “I love you too,” he eventually said back, but El didn’t feel any better. 

Just when the silence was becoming deafening, Hopper eventually pushed his plate to the side and set his fork down, startling El. “Shit, kid, I need to tell you something. I’m so sorry,” he mumbled but looked her dead in the eyes, making El squirm. As Dustin frequently said, what the hell?

El tried to swallow the waffle in her mouth but had a hard time with the lump that was already mounting in her throat. “It’s okay, Dad,” she tried to console Hop, reaching for his hand, which he let her grab but didn’t grip back.

She watched as Hop took a deep breath and looked to resign himself to whatever he needed to get out. “Fuck, kid, look, I love you so much,” he huffed out, and El felt herself go pale. Hopper never got like this.

“And I’m so sorry.”

What. The fuck.

“When you just got out of the lab,” he started, and El tensed. “And Will was still...in the bad place.” He was choking on his own words now. “Brenner gave me a deal. I told him where you were, and he let us get Will. Will only lived because I took it, kid, he would have died there if I hadn’t. And I know-”

“Who?” El whispered, breakfast forgotten and the clatter of dishes and conversation being replaced by a dull ringing in her ears.

Hopper just stared at her unblinkingly. “Who...what, Ellie?” he asked slowly, deliberately, as though he was scared of each word. But El didn’t elaborate.

El shook her head. “I’m so sorry,” Hopper repeated. “But I promised myself I’d tell you this when you decided to start therapy. You needed to know. It’s important. No one needs to be keeping secrets from you when you’re ripping yourself open.”

When the numbness in El from her fingers to her toes was replaced by a flood of emotion, heard the crash of plates and mugs as the contents of their table was whisked away. She didn’t even know she did it; she only knew it happened when all background noise was replaced by silence and there were so. many. Eyes.

So many eyes on her.

El shook her head again, starting to rise, not sure where she was going. “Ellie, please, I’m sorry, I needed to tell you for your own good, and I didn’t know you’d become my kid, Ellie-”

The nagging fear of if anyone had seen her make a mess on the floor without moving her finger was overpowered by the throbbing behind her eyes and her silent fight to catch a deep breath.

“Don’t call me Ellie,” she said, no bite, no venom.

She didn’t know the man in front of her anymore.

El fled from the booth without Hopper, who was trying to explain to the waitress that she just needed a moment to herself. El briefly faced the fleeting question of if anyone could tell he was actually pinned to the cushions beneath him. Hop was probably trying to make himself look casually seated, always trying to protect her.

Protect her?

Who even was this man?

When El burst through the Denny’s doors and the chilled air slammed into her-

_ Cold. Other than the itchy trickle of blood from her nose and ears along with the the sharp pains behind her forehead, that was what El always felt as she used her powers in the lab. _

_ Cold. _

_ Not like a fall night kind of cold, but a feverish cold. The kind where you feel cold straight through to your bones and know no external force could stop it. _

_ Her papa hadn’t asked for anything new that night. Something about the need for practice and “coming back to the basics”. El had forced herself into darkness and wandered aimlessly for her Papa. “Hide and seek” he called it. _

_ Keeping herself in the black was hard. It was really, really hard. Her mind wanted nothing more than to be aligned with her body, to be all in one place, but when El spun around and found a speck in the distance, she clambered towards it. She was so cold.  _

_ When the blue suit and whitening hair came into focus, El started to run towards her Papa. She found him. She won. “Beautiful,” she knew her Papa would say. _

_ So when she finally made her way to him and he ran a hand over the fuzz on her hand, she waited for the word. The affirmation that she had done good. _

_ But she didn’t get it. “We will do something a little more than the basics tonight,” her Papa said, and El stared back at him, confused why he had gone against the plans he told her. _

_ “You need to learn to stay here for long periods of time. So we are going to stay here for ten whole minutes more. You can do that.” El didn’t really know how long a minute was, but since she could still feel the itch of blood on her abandoned skin, she knew she wasn’t happy at the idea of ten of them. _

_ She looked around, not sure what she expected to see in this place but still displeased when there was absolutely nothing. “I’ll keep you busy,” her Papa said, and El watched as he undid his belt and pulled out his. thing. _

_ Her Papa forced her head down to a position that hurt her back, being too short to kneel but too tall to stand. She wanted to leave this place. She wanted to go back to her body, to have someone wipe away the blood and send her to her room so she could escape the feverish cold and go to sleep. But instead, her Papa placed a bruising grasp on the base of her neck and guided her mouth as she cried. _

_ And when her mouth filled with salty wetness, she couldn’t breathe. _

Hopper gave her back to people who didn’t let her breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it might be hard for you to read. Trust me, it’s hard for me to write, too. But I felt the need to emphasize that not everything is a downhill battle. El needed to find our about Hopper's betrayal at some point, and I liked the idea of him vowing to tell her when she started therapy so she'd have someone to work through it with. I didn't think he'd keep that a secret from her forever.
> 
> Take care. xox


	7. White and peony yellow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My doctor told me to try weaning myself off my meds.  
> It was a bad idea.  
> I’m back.
> 
> Read slowly.

Lucas almost didn’t see her. Hunched over and with her hood pulled over her head, standing stock still with untouched snow mounting on the fabric, she looked almost like another random bum frequenting the far side of the highway. But the hoodie enveloping her was familiar. It was  _ Mike’s _ hoodie.

Lucas wanted to be relieved that he finally found her and she was all in one piece, but honestly, the sight made him ill.

He slammed on the breaks, thanking whatever God there may be that El was traveling on the side of the highway he was going down, and quickly turned on his hazards before getting out.

“El!” he called, and to his shock, El looked up with familiarity in her eyes, like she recognized him. He caught whiff of a stench, and noticed a splash of vomit on the road several feet away. 

Jesus Christ.

“C’mon, El. We gotta go,” he urged, and El didn’t waste a moment in opening the passenger’s side of the car and clamoring in, Lucas taking off just as some jackass behind him started losing their mind.

The two sat in silence until El finally broke it. Lucas had wanted to ask helpful things like, “Are you okay?” but it seemed obvious that she wasn’t, or “Do you want to talk about it?” but he wasn’t sure he’d know what to say if she did. But instead, El asked for gum, and feeling queasy at the knowledge that the vomit had in fact been hers, Lucas directed her to the glove box. 

The car turned onto the nearest exit and El glanced around, seeing they had pulled into a parking lot. “Why are we here?” she asked, panic rising, but Lucas was quick to respond.

“We have to turn around. You were going the wrong way,” he said as gently as he could, and he let El absorb that information.

She sighed. “I was trying to go home,” she admitted, and Lucas nodded. 

“It’s a good thing you were. Hopper was really worried. Called the station and everything but whoever the fuck he left in charge wasn’t there. Called Mike, but he must have been on lunch because the secretary said he wasn’t there. Hopper just happened to have my number, and he and Steve are both looking for you right now too. When we get back to my place - do you want to go back to Will and my place? Okay. - I’m going to call him.”

El pursed a lip and stared blankly ahead for so long that Lucas was about to ask if she understood what he just said. “Let him worry,” she said instead.

 

Lucas and Will lived in an apartment just off campus, although the former spent most of his time at his fraternity’s house. El had been to the apartment a few times now, sometimes in person, sometimes to have late-night talks with Will in the in-between. It was nice; messy, but nice. But after the morning she just had, El had never been so happy to have a sofa to sit on.

Will was at the door as soon as Lucas was unlocking it, throwing his arms around her, a stark contrast to how their stoic but fiercely protective friend had reacted on the freeway. “Eleven,” he blubbered into her shoulder, still the same height as her. El could tell he wanted to go on about how worried he had been and how glad he was that she was safe, but they both knew that wouldn’t have helped. “Let me call Hopper and Steve and Mike and let them know you’re with us,” he said instead, turning to make his way to the phone.

El caught his arm. “No.”

Will froze, glancing to Lucas for a silent plea for context but got none. “No,” El repeated. “Just Steve and Mike. Not Hopper.”

The three stood still until Lucas broke the tension. “Okay, El,” he said, and left the two alone, presumably leaving to make the two phone calls. 

Will wrapped her in a hug again, and this time, El clung back tightly. “What the hell happened?” he whispered, and El knew there was no judgement in that voice. 

She shook her head, instead making her way to the couch and flopping down, Will taking the floor beside her. They breathed slowly and not in sync until El decided what she was ready to say. Her breathing was picking up, face redding and fists clenching.

“He told the bad men where I was,” she ground out through her teeth. Will immediately stood, eyes bugging out, making his way to their open curtains. Confused at the reaction, El sat up. “What are you doing? Will?”

Will slammed the curtains shut and checked that the lock on their door was bolted. “It’s okay, El,” he said stoically, but his face was pale.

When El realized what Will had thought she meant, her heart sank. Not because she had alarmed her friend, but because she wasn’t sure what Hopper would have done if she had spoken to him instead. She shook her head and Will’s eyes softened as she made room on the couch to let herself be held. And to hold. To hold.

She wasn’t sure of much anymore, but between the car ride with Lucas and wrapping herself up with her best friend, El was able o reach one firm conclusion: Hopper didn’t love her. Hopper felt bad for her.

And he was not her father.

 

~

**Five Years Prior**

_ Hopper came over to watch El hard at work. “You know, kid, if you’re really busy tonight, maybe you should get your homework done first? And then we’ll hang out.”  _

_ El put her pencil down. _

_ Dads care. _

_ El shook herself from her thoughts. “Sounds good,” she decided, smiling as earnestly as she could. _

_ Hopper beamed back at her. “I’m proud of you, El. You’re doing a great job.” _

_ Dads are proud. _

_ Hopper went to turn back to the kitchen, but El grabbed his sleeve. “Hop?” she asked, voice sounding smaller than she wanted it to be. _

_ Hopper stared back at the girl knowingly, but not entirely sure what to say. There was so much he wanted to say, but he settled with, “Do you want to talk about it?” for now. _

_ El did. _

_ So Hopper sat on the couch beside her and pulled her into a hug when he saw his precious girl’s bottom lip begin to tremble. “It’s okay, Ellie,” he soothed, rubbing circles on her back. And El wanted to believe that it was. _

_ She just needed answers. She didn’t even know why she was crying. She knew Hopper wasn’t going to the first to say something, always cautious to not push El’s emotional boundaries. Because he cared. Because he could be her father. _

_ El hiccuped, and Hopper clutched her tighter. “You care,” she found her mouth stumbling out. “You gave me a home. You take care of me.” Hopper found tears brimming in the corner of his eyes too, and he tried to hush El’s hiccupped sobs that came between words. “You are proud of me. You like to spend time with me. You come home from work on time because I ask. You try to make me happy.” And El knew all those things were just the tip of the iceberg.  _

_ Hopper nodded against the top of El’s curly head. “Yeah, kid. I do all those things,” he affirmed. _

_ El’s frame quivered. “You are like…” _

_ Hopper didn’t make her finish. “A dad?” he asked, and El’s sobs grew in volume. _

_ The two held each other for what could have been minutes, or could have been hours. They just held each other, marveling at the bond that bloomed between man and child without either of them realizing what it had become. _

_ A family. _

_ ~ _

 

She found her fists dug into the too-long sleeves of Will’s sweatshirt (she wondered silently if it was Samar’s), and Will’s tears ruining the braid the had done up above her forehead. When she took it out later, it would probably be crimped in a way that would make Mike want to play with it.

She knew Will felt sadness radiating from her, betrayal seeping from every pore, and knew Will felt it too. He always felt intensely. 

Eventually, Lucas returned with mismatched mugs of water for each of them, and he sat on the far end of the couch to watch his friends wrapped in each other, three hearts breaking at once.

 

Six hours, a few declined snacks despite rumbling bellies, and several mindless episodes of Cheers later, there was a pounding on the door so incessant that all three party members froze, Will accidentally crushing the chip halfway to his mouth into his palm. El reacted first, getting up to see who was there, even though her friends tried to gently convince her to let them get it.

Mike barreled in as soon as the door was open, wrapping up El tightly with his arms and the drugstore smell of Old Spice. “Jesus, shit, El. El. El, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I missed your call. I’m so sorry. Jesus. Fuck, I’m so sorry.” Neither saw Lucas shaking his head at the sight of El stroking Mike’s back in soothing patterns, because Will kicked him before they looked over again.

“Glad you could make it, Mike!” Lucas deadpanned from the foot of the couch anyway, and El turned to glare while Mike just hung his head. 

Will kicked him again. “Shut the fuck up, Lucas,” he hissed, El nodding in agreement with the sentiment.

“No, he’s right. Fuck, I really am so sorry,” Mike croaked out, taking in the state of the apartment while pressing soft kisses to El’s hairline, even where Will’s tears had flattened her braid in an awkward style. “Everything’s okay now?” he whispered slowly, only because he could see the TV playing and a few pillows strown about the floor, indicating Lucas and Will (maybe El too?) had gotten into a brief pillow fight at some point.

Lucas abruptly stood, startling everyone else in the room. “Everything’s okay now? Are you serious, Mike?” Will tried to grab at his elbow, but Lucas yanked it away, staring daggers at a now sputtering Mike.

“Fuck, Lucas! You know that’s not what I meant!”

“Do you even know why El wasn’t with Hopper? Were you too busy, Mike? Too busy doing whatever the fuck-”

“Stop it!” El screamed, clueless of what she had just prevented. And that was all Lucas needed to snap back into himself, he and Mike sharing a cold stare until Mike gave up and intertwined his fingers with El.

He felt like shit. That much was evident to El, so she nuzzled her head beneath his chin, pulling a twitch of a smile from Will and an eye-roll from Lucas, even if there was no fire behind it. 

Mike’s hand ended up tracing patterns on El’s back.

 

The walls of the library may have been baby blues, and Mike’s eyes may have been the deepest brown in her tiny world, but El mostly just saw outlines.

She made the children laugh at work and gave Mike goodnight kisses and always remembered to wash the soles of her feet. Maybe to rid the burn of the rug slid out from under her.

It was hard to breathe sometimes. Hard to scoop cereal up while breathing through her nose. Hard to count up and down the number line during the episodes.

 

1

2

3

4

5

6

 

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

1

1

1

1

11111111111111111111111111

 

But some things got easier. Letting the phone ring got easier. Turning her attention to the grilled cheese on the stove in front of her while Mike opened the front door and turned Hopper away again. again. again.

Eventually, colors started seeping in again from the outlines of her world, like paint bottles tipped over from the children at the library during finger painting, making Marissa nearly faint and pulling a laugh out of El’s lips. Snow stopped falling and gave way to well-watered grass and trees with budding cherry blossoms. Mike’s freckles came back in full-force as they started spending more time in the sun, warming El in a way she hadn’t realised she had grown so cold.

Other changes were less subtle. El knew it, felt it, understood that every time she visited Amy, walking into the room got easier. And easier and easier and easier.

“Has he come by lately?” Amy asked while El scribbled in her mandala. Greens and browns and yellows and the occasional smattering of violet, like the ground below their apartment. 

El nodded. “Yes,” she answered in full volume, passing Amelia the mauve that was out of her reach. “He comes all the time. Mike sometimes asks if I want to talk to him. Not all the time, but sometimes. I don’t think he likes that we won’t talk, but he’s trying really hard to practice pa-pay-patience. Patience for me to feel ready. Neither of us are good at patience but we’re really trying.”

Musing about life along with the muffled scratching of well-loved paper. Hums and the ever-changing styles of Amy’s hair. The increased frequency of laughter within the tan walls. It was a soundtrack El was happy to live with.

Amy returned the pencil to El, who colored in some small dots on the border of the circle. “Do you ever wonder what I think you should do?”

El stopped. Not froze, just stopped. “Sometimes. But I think you just want me to be happy. Meet my goals.”

Amy hummed. “That  _ is  _ true. I don’t want you to be around people who scare you.”

_ I want to stop scaring the people I love. _

El sighed, mostly through her nose. “Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t write unless I can stand.  
> But trust me, I got plans.
> 
> Edited because I feel BAD: yikes okay I'm like super super super sorry I haven't updated this for so long. Basically I had to stop taking my meds that I've been on for like five years and also my doctor thought there was a tumor on my brain and I just?? I couldn't man. I was in a real bad place. But guess what I DON'T have a tumor on my brain (bows) and I'm feeling much better now and also have a few upcoming chapters already written! So this will now be back to having updates about twice a week. Thanks for your love and support. I love you. I 'preciate you. I respect you.


	8. Azure and Orange

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, let's do the damn thing! (Bachelor, anyone?)

El loved the sound of birds, especially when the nights went well enough that she and Mike got to share the bed, and she would wake up to them singing outside the window while Mike somehow slept through it. She’d think about how annoying it was that his eyelashes were so much longer than hers, even if the shadows they cast on his cheeks were marvelous. She’d think about how strange it was that he always seemed to wake up when she softly stirred in the other room and yet he could easily sleep through open curtains in the morning and the hum of their building landscaper. She’d think about the strip of gold and the beautiful jewel on her ring finger that promised her she’d always be loved. That she’d always have him.

Last night had gone well enough for them to end up where they were now. After therapy, Mike had drawn El a bath that she soaked in until her skin looked like medjool dates and the candles Mike had lit for her were starting to burn out. She had slipped on her pajamas and joined Mike on the couch as he studied, and they sat in contented silence until Mike started nodding off. El had grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the bed, where they were both asleep within moments.

Watching Mike sleep was joyful. In fact, El felt like lately, she had somehow seen less of the gentle rise and fall of his chest, less of the ridiculous way his hair splayed out across the pillows. He was somehow getting busier and busier, and- 

And was it just a trick of the light, or were the circles under his eyes further darkening? And the stubble across his jaw was just a bit more pronounced, like he hadn’t even had time to-

“Good morning, sweetheart,” Mike mumbled, voice roughed with sleep. El hadn’t even noticed one eye slip open. “Watching me while I sleep?”

El chuckled lightly and hummed in confirmation, sliding an arm up Mike’s beneath the comforter. “Go back to sleep?” she asked, still thinking of the state of her fiance’s undereyes. 

The right half of Mike’s lip twitched up. “I’m good. How could I sleep when I’m in bed with a model?” El laughed outright at that, ruffing up Mike’s hair and watching his pupils narrow slowly as they adjusted to the morning light. 

There were a lot of other things Mike wanted to call El. He was in bed with a princess, or moreso a queen. His queen, at least. He was in bed with a heroine, a warrior, a take-on-the-world woman. A goddess, some ethereal being. He switched up his labels for her on a regular basis, much to El’s approval. But his favorite was El: his girl, and the person he belonged to.

“When do you need to leave?” El whispered, soft palm moving to cup his cheek, making Mike lean into the warm touch.

He frowned and huffed out a sound of displeasure. “Nine. But maybe I could just go into hiding in our own home instead?” he joked, and they both laughed, even if they knew it could never happen. Not even close.

The weight of that reality hung in the air until El abruptly wrapped herself around his whole form. “Oh wait, I’ve been sleeping with an octopus this whole time?” Mike teased with a smile, and El giggled, tilting her head up to kiss him, only pulling back after a few moments when she made a joke of his awful morning breath.

Mike laughed pointedly right in her face, giving El another wiff and making her shield her nose in faux horror. “Too smelly!” she cried as Mike ran a thumb over his ribs, making her squirm in delight

“Too smelly? Too smelly, El? Oh, I’ll show you smelly!” Mike retorted, and he slid on top of her, combined laughter filling the limited space between them until Mike closed it and the peppered, innocent kisses that usually filled their mornings turned heavier. El slipped a thumb over Mike’s lower lip, making him gasp, prying out a groan when El deepened the kiss. The noise of approval set her spine alight, and she found her palms holding either side of his face as her ankles absentmindedly knotted at the backs of his knees. Her night shirt (well, one of Mike’s old t-shirts) was riding up her stomach just enough to expose her navel, and when Mike moved to kiss under her jaw, some absurdly fantastic electricity trickled from her heart to her stomach. Her back arched just a little, just enough to feel something-

_ That’s enough. _

El went stiff under Mike and in a split second, it was all over. El was uncrossing her feet and Mike was sitting up and the comforter went with him, showing a smooth columb of skin from the base of her ribcage to just a few, stray hairs poking out from-

“Mike, wait,” El called as Mike moved off the bed to throw on a sweatshirt over his tee. “I didn’t mean to. I never mean to.” 

Mike quickly slid on the garment and swept the hair out of his face, returning to the mattress to kneel next to his love. 

“I know. It doesn’t matter if you mean to or not. We stop either way. Good?”

He left at quarter to nine.

 

Even though El had originally thought she’d never get used to going to an office just to talk about her problems, it had abruptly become normal to her. Just another part of her routine, and sometimes even, almost, just  _ inching towards _ having enjoyable moments.

Maybe it was just nice to have an unbiased third party to tell everything to. It could have been that, or it could have been something as simple as the plush, comfy couch she always sat on. El didn’t know, and if she was being honest, she didn’t really care. 

What she cared about was that Amy thought she was doing a good job, and moreover that  _ she _ thought she was doing a good job. 

Even on the harder days, the days after a particularly bad flashback or even just when Hopper would come by two days in a row and Mike would ask yet again if she was ready to talk to him yet. Guilt plagued her at times - she knew Hopper hated driving all the way out to her. Sometimes she’d think about how useless and awful he must feel, and how hard it must be to live through another daughter slipping right through his fingers. But then she’d realize that she doesn’t know anything about him for sure anymore. 

“I’m tired of talking about him,” El admitted to Amy one Monday evening. “Sometimes I want to talk to him, but I never want it enough to do it. Need more time. I will say when I want it,” El asserted, and Amy accepted the statement with ease. 

“We can talk about whatever you want to talk about, El,” Amy assured her. “Wanna do something different today?” 

The two ended up on the lawn behind the office, El practicing another grounding exercise. 

Sight: that one cloud that looks like a teacup, the one tree in the lineup by the horizon that's way taller than all the others, the already fading vibrant orange of Amy’s newest hairdo

Smell: freshly-cut grass, a wiff of the smoker leaning up against the building somewhere behind them

Touch: the dirt under her fingernails, the way the tips of the grass blades tickled the pads of her fingers when she lightly skimmed over the vegetation, the smoothness of her recently-painted nails

Taste: the cleanliness of her mouth from the apple she had with her lunch, that one piece of dry skin on her upper lip that drove her crazy but wasn’t quite ready to be bitten off yet

Hear:

The pair sat in silence while El tried to pinpoint just one sound, maybe just the hum of a car leaving the parking lot or a rustling of branches when a breeze passed, or even her own heartbeat in her ears, but there was nothing.

“I can’t hear anything,” El said, frustration starting to bubbling up in her. She was so close.

Amy smiled. “That’s still something,” she remarked, and El contemplated that.

Hear: Calm

It was evident that El was content to lie back in the grass, careless of the ants that could have crawled onto her locks, or the dirt that could have tarnished her work skirt. Amy let her lie there like that for a little while, but eventually had to break her from her almost-slumber.

“I think we should revisit those goals you came in with,” Amy said, and El opened her eyes. The goals? Right, the  _ goals _ . She had written them at least two months ago.

“I forgot about them,” El replied honestly, her heart beginning to sink as she slowly realized she hadn’t been accomplishing what she was supposed to during her therapy. “I haven’t been working on them,” she realized, disappointment in herself arising along with a twinge of disappointment in Amy for letting her stray from them.

Amy smiled softly and shook her head. “It might seem like that, but that’s just not true. Do you remember what they were?”

Of course El knew what they were. Yeah, she might have forgotten they existed, but now that she remembered, it was easy to recall every moment of thought that went into their creation.

“You might not be able to just check them off one at a time. You might make steady progress in a few at once, or it might look like you’re getting further away at times.”

El closed her eyes again, aware of Amy staring and anticipating her. Upon reflection, she had made progress in some. Sometimes she did feel safe, at least she thought so. She felt about at safe as the feeling got for her. She didn’t scare Mike and her friends as much anymore, and she couldn’t scare Hopper because he just wasn’t around, right? Her flashbacks were still bad, maybe not any better yet, and she couldn’t quite get herself out of them very well, but she was learning how to. And she was sleeping through the night more often, wasn’t she? A lot of the time, Mike even got to share the bed with her. That’s four. Four out of five, she was making progress. 

That means there’s one out of five that she’s not.

“It’s only been three months. You’re making very quick progress.”

El opened her eyes again and wasn’t surprised to see Amy was already looking down at her. “I haven’t had sex with Mike, yet,” she said bluntly, and Amy nodded.

“Alright,” she answered. “Do you want to work on that?”

El did. El really did.

They ran out of time, but Amy promised El they’d talk about it next time.

And that was true - they talked about it next time, and the next time, and the next time as well.

“A naked body is just a naked body,” Amy said for what must have been the third time that session. “A naked body doesn’t have to mean sex,” she added, and El smiled, just because she thought the word naked, although intimidating, sounded a little funny.

“I know,” she replied. “But sometimes I want it to,” she said sheepishly. “I want Mike’s body to be for sex.”

Amy hummed and wrote something down on her clipboard. “And that’s fine. That’s all fine and good and healthy. But you need to learn his body as a part of him before you even start on sex.”

El uncrossed and re-crossed her legs on the couch. “What does that even mean?” she sighed. Obviously Mike’s body was a part of him. It was Mike, or maybe just an extension of Mike, the real Mike being his brain and heart, or as Karen said, his “soul”. But those were also parts of his body, right? So what does that even mean?

Amy didn’t elaborate anymore than stating the concept, “His body is his body.” El sighed again, still confused at Amy’s words. Of course his body is his body. El didn’t want to learn about philosophical stuff - she wanted to be able to move her limbs in time with his and remember to inhale through her nose when he kissed her breathless and learn what  _ sounds _ she could pry from him.

Amy chuckled, shaking El from her thoughts. “Do you think this is stupid?” she asked innocently, and El paused.

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” El replied slowly, feeling bad for Amy at the conversation taking this turn. 

Amy grinned. “I know. But do you think this is stupid?”

El didn’t want to say yes, didn’t want to say that of course she thinks this is stupid - nothing Amy’s saying makes any sense, and she’d really like to just skip to the part where Amy teaches her how to have sex, not rape. Sex with Mike. Not rape with Papa.

“I just don’t get it,” El whined eventually, collapsing her head onto the sofa and throwing her knees over its back, into a position that must have been uncomfortable and make Amy chuckle lightly.

“You don’t have to get it right now. You just have to try to get it, okay?”

El agreed, even through her frustration.

 

“The last three times I talked to Amy, we talked about sex,” El nonchalantly announced at a Party movie night at Dustin’s place. Mike had some half-beer-half-soda concoction halfway to his lips and sputtered at El’s casual nature of the subject. El watched, thankful that she chose to speak before Mike had actual liquid in his mouth.

Mike glanced around the room quickly. No one else appeared to have heard, the TV too loud and their friends too engrossed in a game of checkers to care. “Oh,” he eventually spit out, and El grinned.

“She is trying to teach me things. I do not really understand, but she said I need to try,” El added, and Mike slowly composed himself, carefully taking a drink from his can while El sipped on her Coke. 

He tentatively grabbed at El’s thumb that wasn’t pressed against her soda can (it was still cold - she must have recently swapped grasps for the soda), and composed a smile. “That’s great, El,” he whispered, and El could see in his eyes that his pleasure at the announcement was genuine. “Do you- do you want to talk about it with me, too?”

El smiled, also glancing around at their friends to make sure they still weren’t being listened in on. “Yes. Talk. Also do,” she murmured, leaning in to press a kiss to Mike’s jaw. She could have sworn she saw him shudder before swallowing thickly.

“O-okay, then we will,” Mike affirmed. “Whenever you want, baby,” he whispered back, kissing the crinkle below her eyes that formed when she smiled just a little absurdly wide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have the next chapter already written...wondering when to post it. :3
> 
> I'd like to get back to questions to get to know you guys better!! So I'm wondering if anyone else here is vegetarian or vegan? Just a random curiosity - I've been vegan for two years and kinda just realized that outside my university's veg club, I don't really know any other vegans! You have no idea how badly I've wanted to make a character vegan (preferably El) and then I'm like no....stop pushing your agenda....on fictional characters....  
> Anyway see you guys soon! How soon, I'm not sure...depends on how long I wait to post the next chapter! xox


	9. Blush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: *Huffs* okay so after much contemplation, this chapter contains nudity and some explicit sexual content. If you don’t want to read this chapter, that’s a-okay, just go on down to the ending notes and I’ll catch you up on what happened in non-graphic detail! But I encourage you to read if you feel comfortable; I really liked how this turned out and I’m usually so eh about my writing so I guess that says something ahaha  
> *If you would like to discuss the ethics of explicit content, check out “Baby Blue and Grey” bc we got a few very insightful threads going on there.*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow so this chapter is long compared to the others but I am not willing to cut it down, so buckle up! I wrote each sentence very slowly and deliberately (as I usually do, but even moreso this time), so this chapter might be best read that way as well. In fact, fun fact, I have vision problems and read really slowly and often have to read sentences a few times, so when I write, I write for a slow reader (the way I read bc that’s all I know, baby). This has been written for a long time now, actually, and I really like how it turned out, so I’m excited to share it with you! I hope you like it too! xox

El knocked twice. “Mike? Can I come in to brush my teeth?” 

After a moment, she heard the shower nozzle turn and the water stop. “What’s up, El?” Mike called back, having heard the knock but not her words.

She yelled back a little louder, “Need to brush my teeth!” She felt silence as Mike paused a second before giving her permission to come in, and El opened the door, welcoming the warmth of the shower steam enveloping her. She made sure to shut it quickly, not wanting the bedroom’s air to move in and make Mike cold.

She could hear the shower start up again behind baby blue bath curtains.  _ “Mike is back there,” _ she not really thought, but moreso  _ realized _ , the weight of the situation hitting her. 

Mike was behind that curtain, completely naked.

It wasn’t like they hadn’t been in the bathroom before at the same time, El sometimes needing to grab a tampon while Mike showered, or Mike accidentally leaving his reading glasses on the counter while El bathed. They were always hidden from each other’s sight. They were comfortable enough with each other to do this, the curtain giving them each enough privacy to coexist in their apartment with only one bathroom.

But this was the first time it made El’s chest thrum so strongly.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. 

_ “A naked body doesn’t have to mean sex.” _

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. 

_ “Learn his body as a part of him before you even start on sex.” _

Thump-thump.

El could barely make out Mike’s shadowy silhouette behind the halfway-opaque curtain, but she could tell he was bending down to grab a bottle of something before he squirted it onto a palm, one arm reaching up to rub the fluid into his hair. 

Feeling something tickle the back of her middle finger, El looked down to realize she had gotten toothpaste not only all over her toothbrush, but onto her hand as well. Shaking her head, trying to snap out of her stupor, she turned on the sink to rinse it away. 

Mike briefly startled her. “Hey, babe? Are my reading glasses there? I’m gonna need them for homework when I get out.” El scanned the counter, noticing that next to Mike’s icky mouthwash (why couldn’t he just use mint?) were, in fact, his reading glasses. He hadn’t gotten them until senior year of high school, when he started getting headaches from eye strain, and Karen made him use them when he had to do schoolwork. Most days at school, he would stuff them in his locker and El only got to see them when the party would get together and study in the evenings. El thought they made him look even more handsome, dark eyes framed like one of Jonathon’s beautiful photographs. 

She knew he was busy tonight, as he was every night lately. Knew linear algebra was “kicking him in the nuts,” as Max had so eloquently described a couple weeks ago. 

And right now, El could not have cared less.

She picked up the glasses and abandoned her toothbrush, gazing up at the steam that rose above the curtains. She usually preferred to bathe instead of shower, hating the way the spray sometimes got in her eyes and obscured her vision, even if bathing was hard to get used to at first because of her memories of The Bath. 

Somehow, none of that mattered as El pulled back the fabric and stepped into the tub. 

Mike was busy running his fingers through his hair, eyes shut tight and facing the other way. For a moment, El felt unsure, her eyes focused strictly on the back of Mike’s head, afraid to look anywhere else until Mike knew she was there.

“M-Mike,” she whispered, and with the single word, her fiance shot his eyes open and spun around, almost slipping at the sight of El standing in the tub, her overalls darkening slightly as stray droplets reached her.

“El!” he whispered back in a single breath before suddenly gripping the fact that  _ holy shit he was naked and El was right fucking there _ and his arms were covering between his thighs, behind his legs, crouching, standing up, awkwardly flailing because he was not prepared for this. “Wh-what are you doing?” he half-yelled, not from upset but from shock and genuine confusion.

El took one slow step forward, now halfway into the downpour as well, and slid Mike’s glasses over his nose, tucking the ends behind his ears, ignoring the hair that clung shamelessly over his scalp. She stood back and admired him, still only looking at his face, while Mike blinked slowly. Water was gathering on the lenses and he couldn’t see a thing, but he knew he was being watched. “You-. You didn’t need to give them to me right now,” he eventually sputtered out, and El couldn’t help but shake out a laugh.

“I know,” she whispered, and went to remove them again, folding them neatly and setting them on the edge of the tub. She stood back to get all of Mike into her line of vision, taking a deep breath and finally scanning over the flesh she had never seen before. A dusting of dark hair sprinkled her fiance’s chest and thighs, and although Mike always felt so solid through his clothes when they hugged and cuddled, his skin looked soft. And between his legs twitched something El had envisioned many times and made her bite her lip at the reality of it. She tore her eyes away and looked back at Mike, whose mouth was gaping open as his face flushed, maybe partway from the shower but not  _ completely _ from the shower. “I came to wash you,” she said, and Mike blinked again.

“T-to wash me?” he echoed, and El nodded. “You want to wash me,” he confirmed, and El smiled softly, rubbing at her own arm which was now soaked, the light brown hairs sticking flatly against her skin.

She made her way towards Mike again, tentatively. “If that’s okay,” she made sure to add, and Mike snapped out of his haze, nodding vigorously.

“Yeah. Y-yeah, of course it’s okay, babe,” he said, mumbling the second half, barely audible over the shower spray against the bottom of the tub. El felt her heart swell at the gentleness in his voice when he said the pet name, and she couldn’t help but grab at his waist and kiss him.

It took a moment for Mike to get with the program and kiss her back, but when he did, he kissed like he  _ meant it _ , coaxing El’s mouth open with the glide of his tongue over her bottom lip, gasping when her hands ran up his sides. He felt her knuckles freeze against his ribs at his sharp intake of breath. “You can touch. It’s okay,” he reassured the perfect girl in front of him, nerves so lit up he worried he was in danger of either passing out or throwing up or both. But instead, he just pressed his cheek into El’s hair and tried to breathe as he felt fingers make their way from his sides to his chest, palms pressing against the little curls there. He shuddered when her thumb, probably on accident, grazed over a nipple and settled over his heart. 

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

El only pulled away from Mike when she went to reach for the bar of soap, which slipped from her hands. She hadn’t realized she was shaking so bad, but when she felt Mike card a hand through her hair, she melted at the realization he was shaking too. “As slow as you want to, or not at all,” he murmured, and El felt a rush of appreciation for the person she chose to call her partner.

On the second try, she properly grasped the bar of soap and pulled Mike mostly out of the spray, tentatively pressing the bar against the pulse point on his neck, feeling it move as he swallowed thickly and his adam’s apple bobbed. A familiar yet newly overbearing tightness was pooling in her lower stomach, but she ignored it as best as she could and focused on the task at hand. If you could even call it a task; she was too lost in the freckled planes of Mike’s chest to possibly stop now.

Once she was satisfied at the slickness covering Mike’s chest and abdomen, she took one of Mike’s hands at a time and rubbed the bar over the skin of each arm, the position awkward because of how lanky Mike was, but neither took notice. Something new and exciting was thickening the air around them. Something adult and loving and necessary.

Shallow breathing. Water hitting white marble. Heartbeats.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

El half set down and half dropped the bar to the ground and started to rub circles over Mike’s skin, bubbles getting on her overalls. Gentle but frantic kisses were placed everywhere from El’s hairline to her nose to her forehead, and El wondered fleetingly if Mike even know he was giving them to her. She stepped back to look at his eyes, taking note of how there was barely any iris showing with how blown-out his pupils were, and coaxed him to turn around so she could pick up the soap again and coat his back. Mike’s shoulders bobbed in response to the touch, and El felt the urge to kiss his shoulder blades at the lean muscle rippling there. But from previous experience and curiosity when she was fourteen, she knew soap didn’t taste very good, so she begrudgingly pushed it away.

Content with her handiwork, she gathered some water into her palms and rinsed the suds away. Mike turned back around, looking like there was a sentence gathering on the tip of his tongue, but it died there when he saw El get down on her knees and look up at him. El thought Mike looked breathtaking, chest heaving and eyes flickering shut just from rubbing the bar of soap over the inside of his thigh. She saw his penis bob in response, and Mike at grabbed the skin above his kneecaps so he had something to hold.

He did not touch her head. He did not force her face to him. He didn’t even speak to her, just watched her when he could and bit his lip and skewed his eyes shut when he couldn’t, overwhelmed at the aura of lust blanketing the situation, even if nothing sexual was happening.

And then it hit El. What Amy meant.

_ “His body is his body.” _

Forget the parts. Forget his calves and his triceps and the half-mast erection above her. This was Mike. This would never be anyone else. His body is his. And it sounded so simple when El mulled it over, and yet it took her seven years of loving this boy to realize.

El let out a shuddering breath as tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, and when she glanced back up at Mike, she saw his hands gripping his own hair taut as he watched her with reddening eyes of his own.

“You’re just so pretty, El,” he more sobbed out than said, and El buried her face into his thigh, kisses pressed to the flesh mingling with tears warmer than the shower. 

Thump-thump.

When she pulled away, Mike was rubbing a soothing thumb over her cheekbone. “You don’t have to wash it unless you want to,” he heaved. “Whatever you want, baby, I swear-”

Mike’s head hit the tiles behind him as El took him in hand, slickness of the soap coating the length that seemed to harden further just from the simple touch. Mike was mumbling incoherently above her. Something about how he can’t help himself, can’t help his body from reacting to her. Something about how she was just too beautiful.

Part of El thought it might be cruel to let go of Mike now, wondering if it was being a  _ tease _ . She had heard the word before, when Lucas whispered it to Max at a movie night last year before biting at her earlobe when they thought no one was looking. The couple left early that night.

But when El brought herself to her feet again and Mike pulled her into a bruising kiss, a thought blossomed in the back of her mind. It wasn’t what she was doing with her hands that did this to Mike, that did this to her. It wasn’t sex. It was  _ her and Mike. Her. And Mike. HerandMike. _

Thump-thump.

Thump-thump.

Thump-thump.

El didn’t even mind the water skewing her vision as Mike sighed against her cupid’s bow and absentmindedly rubbed at her jawline. “Can I-” he choked up, swallowing and trying again. “Can I-” he shook his head, words slipping away again.

So El stepped back and undid the straps of her overalls, letting them fall and slipping her soaking-wet t-shirt above her head. Mike thought he was going to faint when he saw she wasn’t wearing a bra.

“Jesus Christ, Eleven, I just-” He started mumbling nonsense again and held eye contact with her even as he reached to grab the bar of soap. Even as he consciously took a different approach than she had, lathering up his own hands and then rubbing them over her skin, desperate but calculated. El shivered, and Mike thought he had never seen anything more beautiful in his life.

Mike wasn’t as slow as she had been, like he was infatuated by every inch of her yet her as a whole, needing to touch all of her at once or else he might explode. Even when he dropped down and pulled at the shower-soaked denim of her overalls and let her step out of them, his hands seemed to be everywhere, unable to get enough of her. The only places he didn’t touch seemed to be her breasts and her core.

El, writhing slightly above him, had never felt so pent up in her life. When she gave Mike a nod and let him grab at the hem of her panties and pull down, and Mike moaned accidentally at the strand of arousal that connected her sex with the fabric, El wriggled uncontrollably. She needed  _ something _ . She didn’t even know how to get it or what to do, but when Mike spread the soap on her calves instead of where she really needed him to be, she cried out in frustration and nearly slipped as her legs opened further.

Mike, please!” she groaned, and over her own arousal could barely make out the overwhelming flush to Mike’s face as she rubbed her legs together, desperate for some sort of friction like she might absolutely positively die if she didn’t get it right now.

Mike hummed as thoughtfully as he could, although he thought he himself might die if he wasn’t able to give El what she wanted. Looking up at her frantically rubbing her legs together and her hips bucking into nothing, searching for something she had never sought out so desperately before, he knew this woman was a goddess, his goddess, and he would do anything for her.

He rose back on his feet again and El took both sides of his face in hand, her hips rocking frantically into his pubic bone, prying a gasp from both of them. “Baby, baby, hang on,” Mike panted out, even though every instinct inside him told him  _ less talking more doing _ . Although he had never been this aroused in his entire existence, he made a point to still El’s frantic gyrations with his palm against her hip. “You say the word, and I’ll take care of you, El. Baby, I’ll take care of you. But I don’t want to do too much tonight. Don’t think about getting me off.”

El was about to protest, the desire to make Mike a quivering mess running through every fiber within her, but Mike’s eyes were so close to hers that she had to switch between looking at one and the other, and she knew he was serious. She bucked again, and this time, he didn’t grab her hips to still her. “Please, Mike. I need…” she panted out, not sure how to phrase what she needed and just hoping Mike would understand.

Mike kissed her, hard, and nodded against her lips. “Okay, okay. Hold it together, El. I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” he murmured against her ear.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

One hand snaked its way to El’s tailbone as Mike kept kissing her, and when she felt it travel to her bum and squeeze, El moaned shamelessly into Mike’s open mouth and let goosebumps rise over her. She went to kiss him again, but Mike was already working over her neck, kissing against her collarbone and sucking occasionally. She flung her arms around his neck for support, worried for a moment that she might fall down at the feeling of it, and was reminded again that he was shaking just as much as she was. 

“Hurry,” El sobbed out, but lost her voice when she felt Mike take the hard bud of her nipple into his mouth, sucking and licking, her hips moving even more frantically and now actually finding friction on Mike’s hipbone from his position leaning down. She moaned again, and Mike made every effort to memorize the sound for later use.

By the time he slid down to his knees, El wasn’t even looking at him anymore, eyes forced closed and her head thrown back, small but perky breasts heaving with her heavy breathing. Right then, Mike thought they might be breathing in sync.

Because El wasn’t looking anymore but the insatiable movement of her hips was continuing, she felt only surprise when Mike’s nose bumped against the untamed hair between her legs. “El, look at me,” she heard Mike’s voice bounce softly against the walls, and she forced herself to look down.

Mike was crouching on his knees, mouth close enough to her sex to feel his breath on her skin. “Please,” she groaned out again, and she watched in fascination as Mike licked at his lips and pressed a kiss to the hair there, before flicking out his tongue and licking a long strip from the hair down between her folds, keeping his eyes on her the whole time.

There wasn’t a much better way to explain what came out of El’s mouth other than a hiccupped cry. Her arms flailed around for something to grasp, and when she felt Mike guide them to his shoulders, she couldn’t help but dig her nails in.

The tightness in her stomach was unlike anything she had ever felt before. But now, she was being taken care of, she could tell. And it felt  _ good _ . Shallow breaths hitting her chest and rendering her useless except to let whimpers fall from her lips. Time had no relevance. She could feel Mike’s tongue alternating from flicking against her to painting long, drawn-our stripes, to licking at her in small circles, and she couldn’t decide which was better. All she knew was that nothing could could possibly make her want to close her legs and stop this.

Tears from her overbearing arousal were sliding down her cheeks shamelessly now, knowing she couldn’t stop them if she tried and not wanting to anyway. Good, good, good. The fleeting thought of  _ “why haven’t I let myself feel this before” _ crossed her mind but was whisked away when she felt Mike suck tightly on her and run the pads of his fingers at the base of her ribs.

Just when El wanted to scream (scream what, she wasn’t sure), Mike flicked his tongue against her skin particularly calculatedly, and when she looked down to see the most positively erotic sight she could have ever imagined, his eyes closed and face buried in her, she was done for. 

What she could only describe as waves rolled through her, starting between her legs and making her weak at the knees. And all she could think was  _ Mike, more, yes, good.  _ She finished with a broken cry of his name as huge hands gripped her thighs to keep her upright.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

When Mike’s ministrations between her legs became unbearably overwhelming, she wiggled her hips away from him and gaped downwards, trying to catch a breath. Mike didn’t help the endeavor, as as soon as he was standing again, he was kissing her, making El shiver when she realized what the foreign taste in his mouth was. They started with teeth clashing and tongues fighting, but by the time El regained her breath, Mike was doing nothing more than pressing his mostly-closed lips to hers earnestly.

“Shouldn’t you come too?” she eventually asked, quietly, only mostly sure she had used the right word. Mike shook his head.

“E-eventually we’ll do me, too. But I don’t want to push it tonight. Is that okay?” El nodded. She was pretty sure every single thing was okay right now. “Was that the first time you came?” he asked in a whisper.

El kissed his cheek. “Yes,” she murmured against the sea of freckles, and Mike breathed out slowly. It might have been El’s first, but now that she knew how great orgasms were, she was certain it was not going to be her last.

Mike reached for the bar of soap again, and El realized he was about to clean up where she had gushed all over her legs. “Well, I feel lucky I got to be there for it,” Mike admitted sheepishly. “You looked breathtaking,” he added, emphasizing each word as he cleaned between her thighs, and El thought she had never been so in love.

They dried themselves off, watching each other as they did so. After they brushed their teeth El left the room and Mike shut the door behind her, knowing he needed to finish himself off or he’d never get to sleep that night. El listened from the other room, trying to hear a moan or a whimper or anything, but to no avail. When Mike finally emerged from the room with a towel around his waist, he saw El nestled under the blankets of their bed, covers pulled up to her chin. He went to their dresser to pull on some boxers and an old tee, but was interrupted by El addressing him from the mattress. “No,” she said, eyes wide. “Bed tonight. No clothes.” 

And Mike would never say no to that. He told her as much as he slid in beside her.

Just before El fell asleep, Mike poked her nose and forced her to grunt out an acknowledgement that she was in fact awake. “What, Mike?”

The body beside her shook softly with laughter, and El wondered what could be funny enough to disrupt her sleep. “I can’t believe you stood in the shower with clothes for so long.” 

El beamed and laughed too despite her fatigue, pulling Mike and his warmth closer to her.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


~

 

A few miles away, Dustin: “Wow, Mike must really be swamped to not make it tonight.”

Will, next to him, nursing a beer: “I didn’t know anything could keep either of them from game night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, if you decided not to read this chapter, El got into the shower with an already showering Mike and washed him, and he washed her and performed oral sex on her, and then they went to sleep with each other w/o clothes on. Oh and Mike politely finished when El was in the other room, not wanting to overwhelm her. It’s actually all very sweet and very very emotional.
> 
> Alright so this chapter’s question (but this time it’s not really a question) : I need prompts for my “My drunk fics” work so head on down to that and drop a comment with your prompt. It can be anything from a sentence to a verse or an idea or a pairing or what the fuck ever. Just go drop something and I’ll see what my drunk brain comes up with. I don’t drink often, but when I do, it’s because my friends are going out and I pregame at home with them and then stay home (bc I will not risk my career by putting myself in danger of getting an underage) and then I have fuckall to do so I write!! Otherwise I try doing homework (bad idea) or try pulling off my own lil “my drunk kitchen” and let’s be real, I barely remember to turn off the oven when I’m sober.
> 
> Take care! xox


	10. Slate and army green

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edit: I forgot to post this in rich text for the first 30 secs but it's fixed now!! 
> 
> Alright, here’s the deal, guys. So I thought I was all good when I found out I don’t have a brain tumor, but I actually have a breast tumor. So yeah. My specialist insists that I have a lumpectomy but can’t get it until the semester’s over. Bets right now are on that it’s not cancerous, and I’m hoping it stays that way. I’ve had a week now to process, but like I said, when I’m in a real bad place I literally cannot write. It’s impossible. So updates will be unpredictable maybe for the next few weeks, but please do not for one second believe I am ever abandoning this fic. It is going until the very end.
> 
> Also, if you had concerns with the timing of the previous chapter, there are some very insightful threads going on in the comments that I have read and will respond to ASAP. I will just say that I have placed Blush very purposefully. Have some faith in me, guys - this is going to be a long fic! :) I have everything until the end planned out and woven together (in my opinion) smoothly and beautifully.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mike's POV!!

When Mike woke, the first thing he registered was a smoothly-shaven kneecap pushing into his tailbone. The second thing he registered was that he didn’t have the blanket cocooned around him - rather, it was El, and their bare skin sandwiched a sticky layer of sweat. The third thing he realized was that he was not spooning her, but rather, he was being spooned. A smooth little roll of fat over her soft stomach was pressed against his back, and El’s arms wove protectively all the way around him. 

Mike lied as still as possible despite the crick in his neck, appreciative to just stay in the firm hold of his fiance. He replayed back every moment of the previous night and shoved down an increasingly intense urge to flip around in El’s arms and kiss her awake and tell her how proud he was and how much he loves her and-

Wait.

_ What time is it? _

He tried to contort himself to check his watch without disturbing El, but realized that, shit, he hadn’t bothered to put it back on after the shower. Fuck, and he hadn’t set an alarm for that morning either, too engrossed in the warm figure under the blankets with him to even come close to remembering.  _ Oh, fuck. _

Fighting his racing heart and attempting to remove himself from El’s clutch without waking her, he wriggled his way out from underneath the comforter and hurried to the bathroom, where his watch lay on the sink. 

5:04

Okay. Okay. He was okay. He wasn’t late yet; the morning would be rushed, but he would still make it. 

He brushed his teeth too frantically (El would not have been pleased) and threw on the first outfit he could find on the floor, then crept past the bedroom to make his way to the kitchen, heating up margarine in the microwave and spreading it on an untoasted bagel to save time. Walkie - always keep it close in case El needs to reach him with her powers. Pre-packed lunch - thank god. Backpack, already stuffed with today’s necessities. Wait, jacket? No jacket - fuck it. No time. Where the fuck did he put the bagel? Oh my god, where was the bagel, he was gonna starve - wait, it’s in his hand.

He scribbled out a note to El on the whiteboard dawning their fridge before glancing back into the room. She was still fast asleep, the covers disheveled just enough to expose her shoulders. Good. Good, good, good. 

 

_ Talking to prof before class starts. Math is hard. _ _  
_ _ I love you so much. I’m so proud of you. You were beautiful last night. _ (God, should he really write that? “Last night was amazing?” Well yeah, duh. “Last night was fun?” What the fuck, no. “You did great last night?” Ugh, fuck it, it’s fine.) _ I’ll pick you up from work tonight, but it’s beautiful today so you should love the walk to get there. _

_ Love, M _

 

On his drive into campus, all Mike could think about was how much El hates when he speeds.

He half-assed parked into his spot ( _ I mean, the asshole assigned next to him can’t fucking stay in his own space half the time - he wasn’t causing any harm doing it just this once _ ) and booked it to Dr. Cordon’s office.  _ Did he lock his car? Fuck it, no one busts into a rustbucket. _

He made it to the physics building and called for the elevator to take him to the seventh floor.

Whirring. The tapping of his left foot. Standing still was uncomfortable.

Out of the elevator. The hallway lights automatically turned on once he made his way through them, definitely being the first one there today. He fumbled with his key to get into the room but eventually succeeded, dashing in and turning on the lights. 

Dr. Cordon had been kind enough to give Mike his own little corner of the room: a simple desk and chair setup where Mike could fulfill his TA duties in peace, especially because the professor wasn’t the most talkative man. Mike retrieved a bundle of graded exams from his bag and placed them on Dr. Cordon’s desk, then settled into his own to grade the rest of the homeworks he hadn’t gotten through last night.

_ Focus, focus, focus. You can’t grade if you’re not paying attention. _

_ It’s 5:36. You need to leave at 7:40 at the LATEST, which means you need to grade at about...how many homeworks are left? Okay, so one done every....eight minutes? Seven if you want to grab a coffee on the way, and God you need your coffee. It’s 5:39 now, fuck, Mike, focus! _

_ 5:44. 5:48. 6:12!? When did that- nope, stop it, it doesn’t matter.  _

_ Focus. _

After grading the last homework ( _ man, are some of these kids even trying??), _ Mike shoved the completed stack on the professor’s desk next to the exams and headed towards the nearest McDonalds. 7:42.  _ Jesus Christ, why are these people not moving faster? Do you even need to order? _ “Yeah, hi, I’ll have a large coffee and an egg McMuffin. Yes, that’s everything.”  _ And can you inject it straight into my veins while you’re at it? _

He made it to his 8 AM at 7:59, but the professor wasn’t there until 8:02. Annoying, but fine; two minutes less of Intro to Quantum Mechanics was always fine.

Blah blah blah, insert-something-Mike-might-have-been-interested-in-had-he-not-been-so-fucking-tired. Blah, blah, blah, quiz next Wednesday, don’t remind him.

His notes were riddled with scribbled out equations and doodles in the margins that Will would have laughed at.

8:50. Class out. Alright, that meant he had exactly...seventy five minutes to sit his ass down and study. 

Or try to study. Every time he tried to write, the letters got splotchy and bouncy. Damn, he’d kill for his reading glasses right now, but they must still be sitting on the edge of the tub. Because El put them there. 

Man, he’d so much rather be with El right now.

After a fruitless attempt to work on linear algebra, Mike gave up and went up a floor to his next destination: a class he took in freshman year, the one he TA’d. 

He sat himself in the back of the lecture hall so he could see any hands that went up. “Hey, Mike! Happy Tuesday, dude!” He blinked at the student next to him with a red buzzcut -  _ that kind of looked like a rash _ \- and thick-rimmed glasses.  _ Fuck, freshmen were so annoying. _

“Hey Ray,” Mike mumbled back to the suck-up.

Ray readjusted himself in his seat and reached into his bag absentmindedly for his binder. “Long night?” he asked, obviously eyeing the discoloration under Mike’s eyes. 

Mike wanted to snap back with something snarky, probably along the lines of,  _ “Look kid, I’m just here to get paid so mind your own fucking business and let me do my thing just well enough to get paid,” _ but instead sighed and shook his head. “Not really,” he said, not exactly lying. Last night had been fantastic.

Mike made his way around the hall to answer questions about practice problems, pausing to make sure all the students were paying attention whenever Dr. Cordon had something to say, which wasn’t very often. Students were supposed to read textbook before class and then come in with questions, prepared to practice. 

Somehow the time went by, and Mike made sure to check in with the professor before heading out on his way. 

He had two more classes to get to that day, back to back, which went by pretty uneventfully. Then onto his next stop, the laboratory.

Mike loved working for NASA. He really did. They paid well and appreciated him, not to mention served as a way to get his name out there before graduating. They were only a short drive away, even closer to the apartment than campus was.

Mike drove absentmindedly ( _ see? Nobody breaks into Rusty.)  _ and seemed to lose the time between parking and swiping his key-card to the third floor.    
“Good morning, Michael!” Candy called from reception. “Beautiful day out, isn’t it?”

_ Was it? He was mostly just cold lately. _ “Yeah, definitely,” Mike replied instead to the bouncy-haired blonde. “Did El call?” he asked, always wanting to make sure. 

“Let me see…” Candy mumbled, going through some papers. “No...I don’t think so. Were you expecting her to?”

He was not. He just always wanted to be sure. “No. Just checking. See ya later!” 

Candy waved him off as he headed down the hall to say hi to his boss, having fully resigned himself to the benefits of being a kiss-ass. He definitely didn’t like it, but it had great results.

Don was engrossed in his desktop, but didn’t seem particularly unavailable. “Hey Don,” Mike greeted, knocking twice at the threshold even though the door was open. His boss immediately looked up, giving him a big grin.

“Mike, my man! How ‘ya doin’, kid? Awesome work you did last week, by the way. Upstairs is very happy,” Don praised, making Mike smile despite himself. Good work meant good pay.

Mike accepted the compliment with as much sincerity and humility as he could muster. “No problem, boss,” he answered, adding in the ‘boss’ because he knew Don liked hearing it.

The man sat back further into his chair then and seemed to give Mike his full attention. “I do gotta tell you something, though. Take a seat,” he said, tone suddenly very serious.    
Mike did not like that tone, but he sat down anyway, trying to brace himself for what he was pretty sure he could already predict.

Don ran a hand over his receding hairline. “Now, know this in no way is a reflection of your performance. But our budget is getting tighter this summer, and we have to make some sacrifices.” Mike’s heart dropped.

“I know I promised you the extra hours, and you can have them until the end of May. But then we have to go back to the twenty a week- yeah, I know. I’m sorry, Mike. Don’t look at me like that. You gotta remember this is supposed to be an internship, not a full-time job. If you need some more cash, you’re gonna have to find a second job for the summer. I can’t employ you full-time.”

Mike didn’t notice he had his forehead in his palms until he realized he couldn’t see Don anymore. “Damn, kid, I’m so sorry. I really am. But the budget’s just so tight. I advocated for you; I really did. But there’s only so much I can do.”

_ “Only so much I can do.” It was becoming the motto to Mike’s life. _

He didn’t get much work done in the six hours he spent in the office, instead going over numbers. Four sources of income: TA, NASA, El’s job at the library, and-”

_ Brrrrrrrrrrrrring! Brrrrrrrrrrrrrring!  _ Mike blinked the fuzzies away from the corners of his vision and picked up the phone. “You’ve reached Michael Wheeler,” he answered, and the person on the other line let out a giggle, making him let out a relieved sigh.

“You sound like a boss,” El laughed from the other end of the line. Mike thought of what she must look like right now - dressed in one of her favorite sundresses to compliment the weather, a stack of books next to her and happily playing children behind her. 

Mike pretended to scoff. “Who says I’m not a boss?” he feigned offense, and El laughed again. Fuck, he wanted to go back to this morning where she was curled all up around him. “What’s up, beautiful girl?”

It was El’s turn to mock-scoff. “Stop it. Dustin just called. He wants us to get ice cream tonight.”

_ Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Eating ice cream with El and the others sounded like the best thing in the world. _ “Dammit, I can’t,” he sighed instead. He could practically hear El’s disappointment through her breathing. “I’m sorry, baby. I really wish I could, but I have to stay late.” Silence. “If you wanna go, though, have Dustin get you. I’ll meet you back home tonight?”

“Yeah,” El replied, and Mike felt his heart break.

They spent a minute just listening to each other breathe through the phone, until Mike couldn’t take the wordlessness. “Did you get my note?” he whispered.

El didn’t reply at first, but them hummed out, “mmhmm,” and Mike smiled, knowing her tendency to nod while on the phone, forgetting the other person couldn’t tell what she was doing. “I liked it.”

Mike beamed. “Well, I  _ love _ you, so I win.”

He earned another giggle. “I love you too. See you at home?” 

“See you at home.”

Mike packed up a few minutes later, waving goodbye to Candy, but not to Don who had already left. 

Occupied by the sunset, he didn’t notice the figure sitting on Rusty’s hood. 

“Oh yeah, definitely staying late,” the person said, making Mike jump and look up at green eyes and groomed curls.

_ Fucking shit.  _

“Dustin, I’m not in the mood,” he shook his head, now obviously realizing he was going to get another talking-to.

Dustin stayed still for a while, not making any movement, just studying Mike. 

“C’mon, Mike. Let’s go get ice cream. You don’t have to do this.”

Mike shook his head again, staring up at the darkening sky above him. He was so tired. He was so fucking tired. His body hurt, and his stomach ached. He wanted a hug, or a few dozen hugs. Dinner and a winning lottery ticket, while he was at it.

“Yeah I do,” he tried to reply stoically, but Dustin wasn’t having it.

“No you don’t,” he argued back, kicking his feet against the the front of the car. “Go home. Call Hopper. He would want to help. Call your mom and tell her you need more money for textbooks or something.”

“That’s not honest,” Mike ground out, and startled when he heard a “bang” against the hood of the car.

“Dammit, Mike! And this is? Is this honest? Sneaking around like this? You’re going to get fucking caught. You’re going to go to jail.”   
“Shut up!” Mike yelled, half from anger and half from fear of being heard. He hadn’t realized he was shaking so badly until now.

“The least you could do is tell El. I know you’re doing what you think is best, but it’s not. You’re lying to her, and when she finds out what’s going on - and she will find out - how the fuck is she going to trust you?”

“She’s not going to find out,” Mike snarled, punctuating each world. “She will never find out because I will never get caught, and you will never tell her.” 

Dustin stared blankly at the ground, thumbs twisted together, solemn. “That’s true,” he whispered. “I won’t. But Lucas said he almost did, on accident, after the incident with Hopper. It’s a big secret, Mike. I’m worried about it. We’re worried about you.”

He had had enough. “There’s nothing to worry about,” he shouted, climbing into Rusty. Dustin hopped off the hood, and Mike sped away.

 

This part was his least favorite of his day. 

Driving to a beat-up complex and knocking on the most beat-up door of them all. He had to knock four times before Tyler answered and invited him inside. 

The transaction was always wordless. Mike unzipped his backpack and Tyler put in the drugs. Weed and morphine - a weird combination, but Tyler grew weed and his roommate knew how to make morphine. Some people bought both. Some only bought one. After they picked it up from Mike, they called Tyler and let them know they got it. And then the next time Mike went on his run, Tyler paid him.

It was a lot of money. A lot. Of money. Tyler didn’t leave his house with any drugs, too afraid he’d get caught. And he didn’t want people coming in and out of his house all the time. So he had Mike be his dog.

They had met in the beginning of the semester in English. Tyler was always high. He had asked Mike if he did drugs, and Mike said no. 

_ “You look like a desperate guy.” _

_ “Fuck you.” _

_ “You’re broke, aren’t you?” _

_ “How could you possibly know that?” _

They had fallen into each other perfectly. Mike had declined at first, but still took Tyler’s number. The bills piled up. El’s therapy was the final straw; when he saw that copay, he knew he needed more inflow. Mike’s pride was worn down - his desire to provide still strong but his integrity weakening. 

After his bag was zipped up, Tyler pressed his portion of last week’s cash into his hand, which Mike promptly put in his shoe.

“Still don’t want any for yourself?” Tyler asked, giving Mike’s backpack a pat, voice husked with the rasp of a smoker. Mike shook his head. Never. That’s not why he did this.

He left the house without a word and drove down to the southeast end of campus, between the liberal arts building and the library. It was the perfect place - abandoned on one side but busy enough on the other to blend in.

Somehow, dealing was easier than doing the pickups. He always managed not to look people in the eye, instead looking at their hands, counting the cash, going through his bag and picking out the respective bag for the person. He never liked what he saw when he looked up - usually they looked just like everyone else - college kids wearing beanies and tye-dye picking up weed, or well-dressed and overly stressed engineering students picking up morphine to calm their nerves. Mike thought that might be what upset him the most. He was dealing to other kids, just like him.

Mike waited around from eight to eleven, sometimes stopping into the library so he didn’t look like he was loitering. No one gave him a glance; anyone on campus this late was obviously too consumed in their studying. But for this to work, he had to be safe. He had to be careful.

Being careful paid for El’s therapy bills.

_ “Would you like a receipt for your copay?” the receptionist had asked, making his heart stutter. _

_ “No, we’re fine!” he had called back, pulling El from the office. He already knew how much it was. El didn’t know much about money; she really tried to learn, but she didn’t understand it very well. But she knew about it enough to tell when something was expensive, and that bill was expensive. _

_ The best in Indiana was, of course, expensive. _

 

He stumbled home around midnight, finding El curled up in bed with  A Wrinkle in Time . She looked up right away, displeasure written in her features that made Mike’s heart ache. He climbed in next to her and pulled her in to give her a kiss on the forehead.

They sat like that, breathing together, until El whispered. “It’s really late.”

It’s really late. He was late. He was driving in the dark. He should be sleeping. She was still awake only because he wasn’t home yet. She waited for him. He missed ice cream this evening. He works too much. He studies too hard. He should sleep. She’s worried about him.

She was definitely worried about him.

Mike pressed another kiss to her hairline. “I know. Tell me about work,” he whispered back, and let himself calm down to the song of El recounting stories of the children at the library.

He had every intention to study some more, to get homework done so he wouldn’t fall even further behind in his classes. But he drifted off with his cheek pressed into El’s curls. And he slept.

Until that night’s flashback.

And then he did it all again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL, I guess THAT ties in all the subtle hints I’ve been trying to drop since chapter one lmao - tell me if you saw money troubles coming? Or if you thought Mike was so tired and being weird and absent because of other stuff? I wanna know what was going through your heads so badly so please tell me!!!!!  
> Q/A: Alright I am wondering if anyone in your irl actually in-person human existence knows you use AO3! Personally, I don’t have friends who read fics or anything and my partner knows I write and that my writing is private (I’ve shared some things just not this). So for me, the answer is nobody. So what about you guys? Alright, that’s it for this chapter. xox

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and reviews keep my soul from freezing over.  
> Thank you for reading.  
> xox


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